Surviving Walmart

I was at the mall today and found myself utterly amused with the folks that were out presumedly doing their Christmas shopping. The fact that it was unseasonably warm only added to my amusement. There was large, overweight girl wearing a much too small spaghetti strapped top and eating a Ding-Dong. There was the grizzled guy sitting in the food court, eating a hot dog with his pink striped Victoria's Secret bag on the table with him. There was the really tall, seemingly really old, white-haired gentleman wearing a braided baby-blue headband (like his alter ego was Jane Fonda and she had escaped from 1983 or something). I don't know what I did to deserve such jocularity, but it was awesome.

Now, I'll admit, I live in a decent area and it was a pretty decent mall that I was wandering about. So even without the people parade, I would have been just as fine as I can possibly be out in public. But there are times when I need to shop other places where it's not so fine. There are other places that one finds the need to shop at on occasion where you really find yourself really thinking twice about. You start wondering, "How important is it that I get that item for two bucks less?" Stuff like that. Naturally, this occurs when you have to make the trip to the evil Walmart.

Contrary to the previous statement, I'm really not anti Walmart. I'm moreso anti Walmart patrons. They're not patrons like me who just want to get a good deal. Oh, I'm sure the good deal is part of it, but I guess I just wish that they'd make better use of the funds that they have available. You know, to buy clothes that fit, to buy clothes that cover their ample bodies in an ample manner, to buy someone to watch their screaming children, to buy someone to speak English for them. It's stuff like that where they could really make great strides in the quality of their existence. So I've managed to utilize two methods to help me make it through any sort of Walmart shopping experience and still emerge relatively sane.

The first method I use is sort of akin to a scavenger hunt. I look for folks whose photos would be appropriate for the website People of Walmart. The website is exactly what it sounds like it is and what I just described. See, because there's a certain type of person that you're going to almost always find at a Walmart. The website aims to bring all of those folks together at last via photos taken by others and sent in for all of humanity to enjoy. Over at People of Walmart you'll find individuals such as this woman (I think it's woman. I'd appreciate a little bit of lee-way with this one):

And this chick (Are her breasts growing out of the sides of her torso? I think they might be!):

You'll find guys like this:

You could even find a chicken roaming about the aisles:

Or a goat in a cage in the back of an El Camino (of course):

I'm telling you! There's a certain "type". That theory is only backed up and evidenced by these two gentlemen, one in Texas and one in Missouri. What are the odds that they both shop at the same large chain store? The odds are good if you mention that the store is Walmart. Behold!

Yeah, that scares me a little bit. But you do see what I'm saying, don't you? There's a certain kind of person who shops at Walmart. NOT everyone who shops there is like that; I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that if you're looking for a bald headed man sporting a mullet, well, you know where to go.

Let's just say you're in the Walmart and you see the typical fare of patron that I have illustrated with the photos above, but you're just too darned scared to take a picture of them. What if they see you? They might attack you, beat you up and feed you to their many, many youngins. (That's never worth any sort of monetary savings, I don't care who you are.) It's in instances like those where you need to bring along and break out your Walmart Bingo Card. Behold!

The object is simple and fairly self explanatory. Simply mark off each box as you see the item in the store. And just like in regular Bingo, five in a row wins! What you win is entirely up to you, as you're in charge of this ordeal. You can even give yourself a little bit of lee-way with some of them, but please try to be rational about things. For instance, in the G column, second space down, the item is "kid riding a bike in the store". If you were in Pennsylvania at the time the photo below was taken, I would allow you to mark off that square. Behold!

A kid on a sled being pulled, not by reindeer, but by something much, much more clueless: the caretaker (I'm going with 'caretaker' just because it gives the slimmest of all slim hopes that the person is not the child's parent and will not be raising that child into young adulthood. Good Lord, we need all the hope we can get with a situation like that!)

I might consider letting you check off "someone giving away kittens" if you were the person who spotted this gem in Florida:

Yep, I'd like a bucket of chicken and a side of Kia Spectra. Um, to go, please.

Here's that rat tail hair cut that was referred to in the first square of the "B" column.

I would be OK with the "rebel flag T-shirt" square being filled in by these two folks, but ONLY because of the coonskin cap. Without that cap, it's a no-go.

Along these same lines, I would also let you mark off that square if you saw this guy with his rebel flag leather cap, but ONLY if he had that dangly, gold, feather earring. No earring? No X.

I'll give you the first square in the "I" column "child without shoes" if you saw this guy in Oklahoma, but ONLY because he doesn't have a shirt either!

I was a bit disappointed that there was a square on there for "person wearing an ankle monitor".

And I'll also allow you to replace "pregnant woman" with "fat enough to be pregnant three times over" if they're sporting the visible tramp stamp as required in the last box of the "G" column.

But if you're going to be substituting, you could really find yourself in quite a quandry. Take this chap for instance. The child isn't crying, as per the last square in the "N" column, but you can hardly call the little guy "attended" as opposed to the required "unattended". So what do you do? It's a head scratcher, all right. Hard to say. Use your best judgment (unlike the guy watching the baby). I'm going to go ahead and give myself the square. It's my blog. Try and stop me.

Here's that "obese person using a scooter" that we needed for the top square in the "O" column.
Those folks could also be used for the "entire family wearing NASCAR apparel", as I think that winter scenery outerwear is close enough in this case. Good Lord, it's entirely too close.

So while it's frighteningly easy to spot these folks at any given Walmart across this fine, fine nation of ours, it's not as easy as one might think to round up that all sought after BINGO! I mean, look at what we've accomplished here. We've found eight of our twenty four squares, but nary a BINGO! Oh, why, why could I not have found a photo of someone buying beer and diapers? Why??

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