I love the Mother Teresa quote which says, “I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”

I would like to be like Mother Teresa, to be able to say that my life is a love letter to the world, but some days, I’m afraid my life looks less like a love letter and more like graffiti.

The other day I went to Walmart to pick up just a few things, and is always the case, when I walked into the store there was no one in the checkout lanes.  The lanes were so empty you coulda gone bowling.  The cashiers were standing in the main aisle chatting and looking around hopefully for someone to checkout.  Ten minutes later, when I had gathered my few things and headed towards the lanes, they were backed up, three deep.

But that did not matter, for I was in a love-letter-writing-to-the-world mood.  I stood in line behind a lady who was apparently stocking up for the apocalypse.  But what did I care? I was all love, peace, patience, kindness, yada yada —  I was busy browsing the September issue of Good Housekeeping (the one with Meredith Vieira on the front; I’m featured somewhere around page 150, in case you care).

Now let me pause here and say that someday I am going to write an entire series on grocery store etiquette, but for now, I will just tell you that at the top of the list of grocery store do’s and don’t is this:  Don’t crowd the person checking out.  They own that space until they have been cleared for takeoff and pushed away from the checkout tarmac, so BACK OFF.  I hate it when I am not even done loading my stuff on the conveyor and the person behind me starts putting their stuff on.  It makes life complicated.  As well, don’t stand right beside me when I am paying.  You are not welcome in my space at that time, so please, step off.

So since the lady in front of me was the current owner of the conveyor, I politely left a reasonable 12-18 inches between the end of the conveyor and me.

As I was standing there, flipping through the pages of Good Housekeeping, I sensed a cart was very close to my backside.  Apparently my backside has some sort of extra sensory perception, my backside has ESP.  So I turned and looked and sure enough, there was a cart there, with only a whisper of airspace between my Hanes yoga pants and this cart.  But again, I was feeling the Mother Teresa vibe, so I didn’t turn and shout, “BACK OFF BUSTER!”  I just kept reading.

And then I heard this very large middle-aged man behind me grumbling loudly. “You are a complete idiot!”  I turned again, anxious to find out to whom he was directing his ire and boy was I surprised when I found out it was ME.  And my first thought was this:  I am glad my kid is not here.  My second thought was this:  Wha?

He continued his tirade against me, describing me in inventive and colorful terms.  That was a day brightener.

I finally figured out that what I had done to upset him so was that I had not moved forward 18-inches and sidled up next to Apocalypse Lady to watch her write her check.  He was upset because he had to stand at the end of the aisle and not next to the gum rack.

I was stunned.  In my years of shopping at Walmart, I’ve encountered the occasional less than pleasant electric cart lady, but never has anyone behaved so aggressively towards me.   So in an effort to smooth his ruffled feathers, I said to him, “I’m really not trying to upset you, I just want to give the lady ahead of me her space.”  But he didn’t care to hear my thoughts and provided an exhaustive description of the content of my character.

And frankly, I didn’t know what to do.  I felt like opening up a can of Antique Mommy whoop bottom on him. I felt angry. I felt intimidated. I felt scared. I felt like crying. But at no time did I feel like writing a love letter with God’s little pencil.

So I just turned away and ignored him as best I could and tried to convince myself I wasn’t terrified.

When it was my turn to checkout, I put my few things on the conveyor, anxious to get checked out and get gone.  I had picked up a water bottle for Sean that did not have a price on it, and for a split second, I was tempted to insist on a price check, just to gig him. But I didn’t.  The urge to flee trumped the urge to gig.  So I told the cashier I didn’t really need it and I would get it another time.  That was as love-lettery as I could muster.

As I left the store, anger began to overtake fear, so I stopped by the manager’s station and told her what had happened and pointed him out.   And then I high tailed it out of there, anxious to get home and get some sympathy from Antique Daddy.

As luck would have it, when I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the lane that passes in front of the store, Mr. Asshat was coming out.  And he notices me in spite of my clever disguise of sunglasses.   He stops in the middle of the of lane with his cart and blocks my car.   He bares his teeth at me, like some kind of animal, and then punctuates his point with his middle finger.  Wow. What an awesome display of manhood. His mother must be so proud.

So then I did what I’m sure Mother Teresa would have done.  I stuck my tongue out at him.  And then I sped home taking a circuitous route.

Yes indeed, Mother Teresa’s life was an inspirational love letter to the world. Then again, Mother Teresa didn’t shop at Walmart.

The thing about elementary school is that nearly every day is a “special day” of some sort and I can’t keep up.  I find calendars to be sort of a complicated device to begin with, but school calendars are incredibly complicated.

Every week there is at least one “special” day.  It’s Team Day! Wear your favorite football team jersey!  It’s Spirit Day! Wear your school mascot t-shirt!  It’s Story Book Character Day! Dress as your favorite storybook character!  It’s Camouflage Day!  Wear Camo!  (That could just be Texas.)  It’s Baseball Cap Day!  It’s Stuffed Animal Day!  It’s Pajama Day!  We have had Pajama Day at least three times this year.

I don’t get all these special days because I am old.  We did not have special days when I was growing up.  I wore an ugly uniform to school every day and it was a special day if you made it home from school without getting whacked upside the head by Sister Mary Clyde.  Special days are a new invention.

But I go along.  When I remember.  Which is almost never.

So then, the other day I walked Sean to school and when we got there, I noticed that everyone was wearing pajamas.  Except for Sean.  Sean stopped dead in his tracks. “Mom!” he cried in despair looking down at himself as though he were naked, “It’s Pajama Day!”

He heaved a mighty groan.  “I’m supposed to be wearing my pajamas!”  He made the saddest of sad faces and cast his eyes downward in sorrow. He huffed.  That he was not properly attired was my fault.  I am the George Bush of motherhood –  everything is my fault.

“Just tell’em we sleep in our clothes,” I said.  I am a problem solver.

“Mom, you need to bring me my pajamas!”

I shook my head. Nope. No. No way.

I might have gone home for a library book or a forgotten lunch, but not PJ’s.  The fact of the matter is, I’m trying to raise Sean to be the kind of person who does not wear pajamas in public.

He groaned and schlepped into school, making the best of an unbearable situation. It is these kinds of life challenges that will make him into a strong and confident man with coping skills.  Or an insecure teenage girl with fashion issues.

After I dropped off Sean, I made my daily trip to Wal-Mart where I saw a number of adult humans wearing their pajamas.

Everyday is Pajama Day at Wal-Mart.

(sigh)

I am a Walmart shopper, this I freely admit.

I did not start out being a Walmart shopper, it just sorta happened to me, sort of in the same way I got pregnant — I have no idea when it happened,  I didn’t plan for it to happen, it just did. One day I wasn’t and then one day I was.  And I still kind of can’t believe it.

Prior to having a child, I had never been in a Walmart that I can recall.  I was a boutique grocery store shopper. I did not buy my t-shirts at the same place I bought hamburger.  I liked the little grocery stores that stock 37 kinds of mustard.

But then I had a child and I no longer needed cranberry sherry mustard. I needed preemie diapers and formula that cost $25 a can.  And as though divinely orchestrated, just before Sean was born a super-Walmart sprang up a short distance from my house.

I understand that some people have issues with Walmart and I even see their point of view.  However, I needed cheap diapers and formula and hamburger all in one stop and there they were, so what was I to do?  My economic ideals are not all that sturdy when it comes to cheap baby formula.

So then, that is my Walmart back story.  It does not relate to anything hereafter other than to say that I have a history with Walmart.

All that to say, not too long ago I was at Walmart, not buying exotic mustard, unless you think French’s is exotic, and as I was strolling down the big wide center aisle, my cart automatically turned into the baby department where I have been a regular for many years.  For almost seven years, that has been my zone – diapers, formula, little socks, adorable little rompers, play clothes, lavender baby shampoo, crib toys, the occasional lullaby CD and other first-time-mom impulse purchases.

Now perhaps you are wondering how I managed to stay in the baby department for six years and I’ll tell you:  Walmart caters to a big baby.  Sean is a string bean of a boy and when he was five, he could wear 2T. Although, admittedly when it came to long pants, a 2T on a tall 5-year-old  makes for a Steve Urkel fashion statement.  But then, we are Walmart shoppers, so obviously fashion is not a huge concern for us.

As it were on that day, I stood there in the baby zone, in the middle of all that luscious nougat baby stuff with my six-year-old who comes up to my shoulder and I realized I was in the wrong place.  The baby zone was no longer my zone.  I glanced across the aisle, towards my new zone, the boy zone with all those big not-adorable clothes, and I dropped my chin to my chest and wept silently. No I didn’t weep, because for Pete’s sake, it is just clothes, but I was sort of stunned.  The thought of crossing over to the other side rocked my boat just a little.  I could see from clear across the aisle that there were no cute little socks or luscious anything over there, just big boy stuff, and I knew that I wasn’t going to like the new zone.

And I don’t like the new zone.  Unlike the baby zone, there is nothing impulse-purchase worthy to be had. One t-shirt is the same as the next.

As a mother, this sixth year has been one of many changes, firsts and milestones.  Most mothers wistfully remember the day they sent their baby off to 1^st grade.  I remember the day I had to cross over the aisle in Walmart.

So every trip to Walmart, there is always some drama unfolding somewhere.  Walmart is perpetual interactive theater, 24-hours a day, seven days a week, with a cast of thousands.

Yesterday, it all unfolded before I even set foot in the store.

I pulled into the parking lot and headed up my usual row and just as I’m about to pull into my space, I see something kind of weird on the ground. So I slow down and take a closer look.  A big bird of some sort, maybe a falcon, has another bird pinned to the ground and is standing on it.  I have never seen anything like this before, so I stop the car completely and gawk.

Both birds look up at me.  The bird with his face smashed to the ground looks up at me with pleading eyes as if to say “haaaalpme.”  The bully bird gives me a dirty look, as if to say “Get outta here or you’re next.”  I’m certain that if the bully bird had a middle finger, he would have used it. (And that would be the bird giving me the bird. Ha.)

Crud crud crud!  Only  9:15 am and I’ve already got a moral dilemma.

Do I mind my own business and let nature take its course and then spend the rest of the day feeling guilty and un-Samaritan like? or Do I use my mom voice and give the bigger bird a good talking to and shame him into repentance? Given that I am terrified of birds, that second one wasn’t really an option.

At that moment, in a flash of brilliance, I decided that I would rev the engine and honk the horn a couple of times, thus scaring the bigger bird away and giving the smaller bird a chance to get away and notify the Walmart security team.

But if you were the elderly lady putting groceries in your trunk two spaces ahead, all you saw was some crazy lady in a dirty SUV revving her engine at you and honking furiously.   For the second time that morning, I got a dirty look.  But to her credit,  she did not use her middle finger.

I pulled up next to her and rolled down my window to explain.  She backed out and took no notice of my pleading eyes.  I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t honking at her, but that there was this big bird standing on this little bird….

Oh never mind….

Exit stage left.

Last week, after the second blood draw, Sean and I went to Wal-Mart to get a few things that we needed and a few things we didn’t. He had been such a brave soldier through the whole ordeal — much better than mommy — that I wanted to let him pick out a new Lightning McQueen diecast car or something frivolous.

Because it was a fasting blood draw, we had to yank him out of bed at dark thirty in the morning. Consequently it was now the mid-afternoon and he was still wearing what he had on first thing in the morning when we put him in the car – pale blue long john pajamas, slippers with big snowman heads on the toes and a black and orange Halloween sweatshirt that says “Boo!” on the front and crazy rock star hair.

Apparently age four is when self-awareness starts to kick in because as we were getting out of the car, he stopped and looked down at himself.  He was mortified.  With a hand gesture that swept from his shoulder down to his knees, he cried, “Oh no! I can’t wear this to the store!”

About that time a sizeable lady about my age scuffed by in slippers and what appeared to be pajama bottoms.

I laughed to myself. I wanted to say, “You know what Sean, you are right. You cannot wear pajamas to the store. It is just not right. We need to go home and change.”

I was relieved to know that even though Sean is in the Wal-Mart, he is not of the Wal-Mart.

I am in a food rut. Do you ever get in a food rut?

Normally I love to cook, I enjoy it, it’s another creative outlet. I love to feed people. 

But right now, nothing sounds good. I can’t think of anything to cook. I don’t want to cook anything. No one wants to eat anything I cook even if I could think of something to cook. Honestly, I would be perfectly happy to not cook anything and not eat anything, but these people called my family, they want to eat. They are so needy.

And we are out of everything except for the stuff we don’t like, like the cans of little miniature corns (yuck) that have been in my pantry for three years.  And the stuff that we do have needs one ingredient that we don’t have to make. Consequently I have been avoiding going to the grocery store. Wal-Mart stock has probably plummeted. Sorry Wal-Mart stockholders.

Today I could not put it off any longer. I had to go to the store and it was going to be painful. I just had no idea how painful.

Sean and I loaded up and braved the 120mph winds and went to Wal-Mart. And we filleth our cart until it overfloweth. And just as we were heading to the checkout lanes, I heard this ‘VROOOWMPH” sound, kind of like the Dolby Surround “The Audience Is Listening” sound at the beginning of a movie, and just like at the movies, the lights dimmed and went out.

Clerks starting telling the shoppers to go to the checkout lanes, that they were going to have to close the store.

But then I heard the VROOOMWMPH again and the lights went back on. Yay for the on VROOOWMPH! So I lingered over the red and green peppers before making my way to checkout lines, because this was Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart has a backup plan, right? Like a backup generator to keep the economy moving, right? Wal-Mart is like the government, we can depend on them, right?

I found an open lane and had half of my stuff checked out when once again VROOOWMPH! and no lights. So in my head, I said crapcrapcrap. I have given up cussing out loud, but inside my head, I still need more work.

The store manager said, sorry folks, the power won’t be back on for an hour or more. You can wait if you like.

So again, in my head, I said crapcrapcrap, because now I was going to have to get in my car, go to another store, all with a four-year-old who was almost maxed out on grocery shopping for the day, and start all over. And that thought made me want to cry or cuss, and so I opted for cussing, in my head.  Perhaps I should have stopped here and prayed for humor, but I’m a work in progress, y’all already know that.

I started thinking that maybe God doesn’t want me to have groceries. Maybe he wants me to eat the little corn.  I just didn’t see that he needed to bring down the local economy over a can of miniature corn.

So anyway, Sean and I left that Wal-Mart, drove a mile and a half down the road to the next Wal-Mart where we once again filleth our cart till it overfloweth. But this time, we did not linger over the peppers.

I’m still in a food rut. I have no idea what I will fix for dinner except that it will have peppers.

Today I had to go to Wal-Mart. And just now I’m cringing at the thought of how many posts I have started with that sentence.

Since it was a bit on the chilly side today, I pulled out a pair of casual coffee-colored suede-ish (not to be confused with Swedish) lace-up shoes that I really love and have had for a number of years. They are the kind of shoes that you love so much that you go back and buy them in another color. And I feel perfectly okay using “you” in that sentence because I’m pretty sure many of “you” do the same thing.

The problem with getting to be my age (and I say that as if there is only one problem) is that sometimes certain events, like say the purchase of a pair of shoes, seems like one or two years ago when in fact it was more like eight or nine years ago.  And sometimes, like today, that is a problem because certain materials have a shelf life. There is a finite period of time before decomposition and disintegration of certain materials occur.  And this disintegration, that might occur, needs to be timed juuuuust right.

Unfortunately, today was one of those days when apparently my timing was off.

Because I left the house wearing two shoes that looked like this.

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And I came home wearing one of those shoes, looking like this.

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I was merrily strolling  down the produce aisle in my favorite suede-ish type shoes when I had some sort of shoe blow out.

All of a sudden, and for no discernable reason, I was half an inch shorter. I looked down and I was standing in a pile of crumbly black disintigrating rubber. I looked behind me and saw a trail of crumbly black disintigrating rubber. It was like I was leaking Oreo crumbs out of the leg of my jeans. I felt like I should sweep up or something. Then I realized that sweeping up in Wal-Mart would be an all-time low, even for me – possibly even lower than the day I flushed my sunglasses at Lego Land.

Quite honestly I didn’t really know what I should do.  I considered heading over to the shoe department and putting on another pair of shoes, but the thought of walking around the store in plastic shoes shackled with elastic seemed somewhat less cool than leaving a trail of Oreo-looking detritus in my wake.

So I just schlumped along with my head held high trying to rise above my crumbling, disintegrating pride.

The other night I dreamed that I died and went to heaven and when I met Jesus at the gate he said, “Remember that time you busted my head off?  Well take this.”  And then I was cast into hell, which was actually Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon.

And remember that part in the Bible that says if your eye causes you to sin that you should gouge it out and if the left hand causes the right to sin, then you should cut if off?  Well apparently my right hand was feeling really repentant about the whole dropping Jesus on his head thing because in the shower on Sunday, while I was shaving my legs, my right hand “slipped” and tried to slice off my left hand. Luckily, the left hand has always been a pretty agile and wily kind of hand and was able to zig and then zag and then serpentine and it got off with what I thought was just a nick in the nail, no blood. Yay for the left hand, boo for the right hand.

But later, as I was making the bed and tucking the covers under the mattress, swiftly executing the perfect hospital corner that is essential to a well-lived life, I realized I had sliced my fingernail deep into the quick because a thread from the blanket caught the….. and oooeeeowwee! Wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. Yeah. It was a near death experience.

Then later that day… (cue Twilight Zone music) I WAS in Wal-Mart and verily I say to ye, it was hell. I won’t describe the kind of hell Wal-Mart is on Sunday because I know y’all are sinners too, just like me, and have probably been cast into Wal-Mart on a Sunday.  It causes you to rethink your life, doesn’t it?

So I get in line with my necessities – plaid wired Christmas ribbon, tortilla chips, more plaid wired Christmas ribbon – and wait for all eternity as the snot encrusted little boy in line behind me, who is standing in the back of his mother’s cart eating a cookie, keeps trying to wipe his mushy cookie hands on the back of my shirt.  And as I’m trying to dodge cookie boy, the elderly man in front of me is telling me a long and involved story in what may or may not have been English.

When it’s finally my turn to check out, I put my stuff on the line. Chatty Cathy, who grew up to be a cashier at Wal-Mart, sees the bandaid on my finger and asks what happened. Without thinking I told her that I cut myself shaving.  She stopped scanning and asked incredulously, “You shave your hands?”

And because I am rotten and wanted to mess with her and be the freakiest person she had to check out on a Sunday, I just nodded and offered no further explanation.

I went to Wal-Mart today and there was no incident. I just wanted to report that.

However.

Last week when Sean and I went grocery shopping, he was very insistent that he wear his dress shoes. With his sweatpants. I tried to tell him there was no reason to get all fancied up, that we were just going to Wal-Mart and he might not want to go to the trouble. But he was insistent saying, “I need to be fancy.” And well, I can understand that. Sometimes one needs to be fancy, even if it is just at Wal-Mart.

The extra effort was not lost on the greeter.

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