>>>what's a raging inferno 'tween friends.<<< (Walmart?) This thread makes me laugh. Honest. I know it's pretty useful and effective because I spent 4:30 to 10:40 in Bigtown at Walmart and Fred Meyer's, keeping MJ company (PROOF I'm a good person), and came home...in a raging inferno. (One of the schoolkids wrote: "I'm as broke as a window in a baseball field.") Turned on the thread and laughed. Handy. "It's a pick-me-up", one of my favorite oldtime phrases.
BTW, "Hell" is a big Walmart. No, actually, it's just a standard size Walmart. You can fit everyone in there. All the people who apparently deserve to be there.
Seen it.
Marco Paulo visited the down-under.
Barely emerged.
Gained new understanding of "eternity".
MJ kept saying, "You wanna go to the car?" Maybe it was the blood squirting out of my ears. Not only that, I had maturely but stupidly picked out a BIG metal leaf rake in the "garden" department, started into that big part and wound up carrying this thing around like a giant warty batwing, for hours. You can only listen to those tines twang for so long. Go ahead ~ Try putting it in the cart. (You would think, since Walmart DOES have everything, they would have a folding rake.) But it's back to Nebraska if you want to put it back.
Lost MJ only once; for ONE HALF HOUR. The Forest Service says when you're lost you pick a good spot and stay there. I leaned on my rake next to a fire some other guys built. "I was waiting for you by the doormats." You can tell a schoolteacher has become stressed when the choice of coco or green plastic becomes a mutual decision.
I remember ~ and this is particularly painful ~ "stuff" on the floor. Like field casualties; dying and wounded. Trash. "Items", that had become homeless. Dislocated. Aisles were morbid Matthew Brady vignettes.
As I surveyed, in macabre ennui, the vista of one aisle, near the horizon a couple of birds landed; and plucked what must be seeds from the linoleum.
Wait a minute, wait a minute! ~ "Seeds" in the linoleum? "seeds" in Walmart?
Wait ~ BIRDS in Walmart?
Yes. Those are two birds, Paul. Feeding on the floor of the Walmart. They have little fluorescent reflections in the polished floor, like a road mirage. They're walkin. They're pecking. They're flying. Whoosh. They take off up into the...sky, as a guy pops in from the next aisle.
I find MJ. "Did you see those BIRDS in the BRUSHES?" She looks at me like "You wanna go to the car?" I can see she's looking at me disgusted. "Look at that idiot. Muddy boots and muddy jeans and muddy suspenders and a muddy parka and a... a rake. He thinks he's a frigging scarecrow." She turned back to some "harvest" she was pulling out from under a pile, looking like this is not the time for that bs, Paul, and I decided to bring it up another time. (Or not at all.)
[MJ just yelled at me from the other room, "Come and get this spider."] Be right back.
As I'm headed back here she says, "Well, it's almost ten o'clock."
Uh oh. Better wrap up. As a matter of fact, she just walked by me to the bathroom and said "Sum up". Kinda mean like.
Shoot ~ I wasn't done yet. Oh well. Better "done" than repeatedly stabbed with a fork.
PS ~ I asked a friendly Walmart old guy (they really do have those) and I said "I heard birds." (I thought this was more clever than saying I saw them, but in retrospect...)
"Oh yes. We have twelve nests in our Walmart" he says, with a truly beaming smile. They let them stay there. Like a wildlife sanctuary. He points one out, a bird (he says is "a momma") on a white girder up there, in the "up there". AMAZING. Truly amazing. ("Got any possums?") They MUST keep this a secret from Samquarters.
And apparently people don't seem to notice the bird poop on their "items". (Or their heads.)
They didn't need a scarecrow (yet), but Frank said to check back. |
