What aisle serenity?
Photo by Caique Morais on Unsplash
An old write I found. From 2021? I’m not sure what the prompt was, nor do I know what my point was. The point was there was no point!
What aisle did you find serenity in? Because I’m beginning to think this Walmart maybe doesn’t carry it.
I’ve already been to Safeway and Target. The mind-numbing red sale stickers and incompetent clerks at Safeway. That popcorn smell at Target that makes me think of the Ben Franklin 5 and 10 in Grundy, Virginia.
Maybe I should go to the natural foods store out there along the tired commercial strip with the poorly paved parking areas and badly marked turns and the gravel potholes and the faded signs and the dogs wandering around. Tattoo parlos. Psychics. Bad Chinese food. Or maybe good Thai food? It’s an unknown. You can take your chances. But that supposed organic store next to the crystal shop next to the gun store next to the 24-hour fitness has only supplements and vitamins and plastic bags of gummy bears and some really sad lettuce and brown bananas and icky smells of Yankee candles and potpourri. At the counter there was a girl who looked anything everything but nourished and healthy. She was peeling something from beneath her fingernails and pecking at her phone and I just turned around and walked back to my rental car.
So here I am at Walmart. I swore never to darken its door. For it definitely feels like door-darkening whenever I stride in, feeling superior to everyone here with their redneck agendas and big ass carts and all saying “have a blessed day.” Don’t get me started. My uncle was judging these people 25 years ago when the Walmart in Norton was new. Talking about how obese and ignorant the clientele was. How ugly inside and out. He was mean about it. But funny. Hilarious really. But mean.
I find that I am — I confess — just as mean. Maybe meaner. I darken that door with my better-than-thou bullshit pettiness. Stomping in like a school shooter ready to use all the ammo I’ve strapped to my body and stuffed into my pockets to mow them down right there in aisles 7, 8 and 12, between the Rubbermaid products and the collection of slow cookers and the battery-operated Halloween decorations that play spooky music as I strut about confidently, thinking of myself as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, mowing them all down with my enlightenment.
