Now I remember why I hate going to Wal-Mart!
As we were unsnapping the girls out of their seats, a dirty-looking guy came up to me and asked me if Mike was my husband. I was really caught off guard, otherwise I would have just asked him what he needed.
The guy went over to Mike's side of the truck and I heard little tidbits of what he was saying: "girlfriend and I," and "really embarrassed."
I got the last two girls, went to the other side of the truck and asked, "What's going on?"
Mike was fishing through his pocket change. Now, I'm all for helping people out, but I'm sure that this guy wasn't needing help. He was scamming for cash.
The guy told me his car was out of gas, and I was thinking to myself How would cash help you get gas unless you're out of gas and money, and then why the hell would you be at the grocery store if you had no money?!? but I just let Mike give him four dollars in quarters and went inside.
Think that's where the fun ends? You're wrong!!!
Usually we shop at Target because of a certain thing called personal space. Customers and employees at Wal-Mart do not seem to know what that is.
A woman with one small child in a cart gawked (literally gawked) at us from two feet away and yelled down the electronics aisle in some form of redneck ebonics. These were the basics: "Hey ya'll! Hey!!! Honey, get over here... look at them triplets! Oh Lord. Lookit!" and then something I couldn't quite decipher about how lucky her daughter was to only have two. She kept carrying on about it until we pushed our cart around her road block and walked away.
The woman made such a scene I was embarassed, which doesn't happen often. People from the site-to-store waiting area were craning their necks to see what was happening. I'm sure they thought someone was either in labor or about to fight.
We got a lot of stares - not completely unusual - and some of the stares might have come purely from being the only white family in Wal-Mart that didn't look like we climbed off the hobo train. Yikes. At least the crazy lady was dressed and showered. She was still crazy, but clean crazy.
So goes our unintentional experiment in social interaction.
10 comments:
The Hobo Train.
I love it.
Loren- Love it! I too shop at Wal-Mart because it's close to us, and cheap, although usually not worth the hassle. And going there with the boys is absolutely rediculous unless I am able to hog-tie them into the cart, which is usually frowned upon for some reason....
Loren,
Too funny. I also have a Walmart phobia. My mom makes me go sometimes, and I leave feeling frustrated and crazy. I think there is something in the air that attrach the crazies.
Kimberly and the GA Guinn Trips
Interesting that you got hit up with the "need gas money, girlfriend and I are stranded." routine. I was bothered with that at the BF WM last fall. Then again in December. Then at the Marion WM last week. Not by the same person, but I only 'donated' the first time because the stories were so similar.
Oh yeah, that seems to be a country wide issue. The Wal-Mart joke is big here.
The bar really can't be any lower in Walmart...but it should reinforce how high your bar really is:)
That same thing happened to us at Applebees the other night. Some guys just came right up to our car as we were loading up the girls, saying how embarrased he was...that he had run out of gas and just needed enough to get home. My DH gave him a few $$ and then we watched him walk right past the gas station where he said his "car" was. Strange!!
We have gotten to the point now where we hardly ever take the girls to Walmart, one of us just goes alone to avoid the circus!!
Katie
mom to triplet girls- 3 years old
www.lenhartfamily.blogspot.com
I LOVE Walmart. The first "I'd kill myself" I ever got was at Walmart.
Needless to say, I NEVER go there. Go to Target with your hobo train!!!!!
That was a funny post :). I found your blog from a comment from amazing trips, I think. I don't have triplets, but we have 5 kids and I feel like a side show at times, even when they are being good! I don't know how many times that I am asked "Are they all yours?" or "How many do you have?". I would love to have a great comeback, but usually-nothing too fabulous as a response. I think I would have dropped everything and ran if that would have happened to me! Brave soul, you :) Thanks for sharing!
We have a gift card to The Wal-Mart, but I can't get up the nerve to go. That is free money, people, and yet I still can't do it.
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