Smith, Wesson, and Fruit of the Loom

Once again, Walmart has provided me with one of the most unusual and unsettling experiences I’ve had in some time.
I hate to support Walmart but it was necessary to do some big box store shopping in order to finish up my Xmas capitalism blowout. After twenty minutes of pushing, shoving, and regretting my recent renouncing of cigarettes, I finally arrived at the cash register. No feeling of relief here, as the woman in line in front of me is holding a gun.
Now don’t panic, this woman was no robber. She had mom-perm like mad, and no self respecting armed robber would be caught dead with such a terrible ‘do. No this woman simply walked into the store, picked out the biggest, shiniest gun she could find, and bought it. For $59.95. Taxes in.
I’ve heard rumours of this sort of thing happening, mainly in gun happy USA. But here in Canada you can apparently arm yourself for less than the price of a more respectable perm than the one modeled by Shooty McHousewife. To make things even weirder the cashier took this all in stride and made jokes about being married to a hunter.
‘Har har har. My fat husband likes to shoot defenseless animals. He doesn’t even like deer meat, he just thinks they look better mounted on a wall. Har har har. By the way, I love your perm. Har har.’
And people wonder why I look shell shocked when I come home from the mall. I found out recently that the original inventor of the shopping centre was so depressed by what he had created, he moved to Europe to escape it. Turns out he hated cars and intended malls to be a social gathering place for pedestrians. Undoubtedly he’s buried under a parking lot somewhere. Stupid poetic injustice.
Xmas shopping did help me learn a valuable life lesson today. I cannot, under any circumstances, shop for underwear for myself when the men’s underwear department is filled with middle aged women buying tighty-whities for their sons and husbands. Sure I would look oh so fashionable in comparison as I picked out my somewhat stylish striped boxer-briefs, but I just couldn’t do it. Something about hordes of middle aged biddies knowing exactly what I’ve got on under my jeans makes me feel terribly vulnerable.
In retrospect, I should have camped out in the bra section. How fun would it be to snicker and point as they pick out their 68 double F’s? Turn about is fair play after all, but I probably would have been asked to leave after I’d laughed myself to tears.
~Attila