Tag Archives: Walmart

Boxing Day at Walmart

Posted on by
Reply

So the morning after Christmas is called Boxing Day in the United Kingdom, because traditionally those who were wealthy would box up things they no longer wanted and give them to their household servants, or to “the poor.”

In Walmart, Dec. 26 is called Boxing Day because of what’s happening in the Christmas clearance aisle.

I went to get cat food for Molly and O’Carolan, and coffee creamer for myself. At 6:30 am I figured the place might not yet be crowded, so what the heck, why not stroll past clearance because it’s fun to find ornaments one can enhance with crochet or decoupage and give next year. Like I did these polar bears.

The three aisles held a dozen women each, and they were not eyeing one another in a friendly way, nor yielding prime real estate with their carts parked in front of their targets. I left my cart at the top and started to walk in, but a woman’s eyes became daggers as she glared at me.

Competition, her face said.

Okay…. you know what, let’s just back away slowly. Who needs another ornament to crochet?

I don’t use wrapping paper, but passed that aisle heading back to my cart. The occupants were engaged in a free-for-all fencing duel. The women were being Southern Polite, which means they figured all actions were justified because they were taking good care of their families by saving money for next year. (Think the milk aisle after a snow forecast.) Ergo it was fair to swing for eyeglasses and hearing aids with the paper tubes.

From a safe distance, I watched. And wondered. Sure, I’d been cheerful about taking a look, but I can crochet an ornament as easily as crochet around a commercially produced ornament, to be honest. It just takes longer.

Those women in the aisle, did they believe they were getting ahead in life, sticking it to the man, spending time wisely by saving money? By spending money? Economics lessons, business classes, and social justice Ted talks on marketing strategies flowed through my brain, not sticking to one theme, more jumbled up like competing Christmas bells in discordance. Was this aisle in this moment what most smart shoppers came down to being? Not eschewing the stuff, but looking for the stuff on sale? Were these women gaming the system, playing the game, or pawns moved by unseen hands across a retail chessboard?

It’s not my intention to sound smug or condescending. We need what we need, we want what we want. Grandkids are born expecting things. Which perhaps proves the point that underneath our choices on how to spend Boxing Day, as Anthropology 101 teaches us, we are making less choices of our own free will than we think we are, because we start with the suppositions society has programmed into us from infancy.

Wrapping paper is life. Wrapping paper is love. Wrapping paper on sale is the ultimate good. According to the Laws of…. who?

I got my cat food and creamer and went home and sat in front of the fire, crocheting a possum scarf while blasting Mannheim Steamroller. Somebody had ordered the scarf from me, so yes, I am a comfortable capitalist—especially when sitting at home in front of my wood stove.

Choose wisely, friends.

Taking the Lid Off

Posted on by
9

Yesterday I did one of those strategic early morning Walmart runs. You know: the aisle-organized list, the double mask, the full body sweatsuit: prepare to raid at dawn.

As is usual when making this foray, I went to the canning aisle first. (It used to be cleaning supplies to look for bleach wipes. Things are improving.) If you’re a canner, you know why I go there first. If you aren’t, don’t worry about it. The point is, when I arrived another woman with a gater mask stood in front of the empty section.

She eyed me sideways and I did the same to her. Were we after the same scarce resources?

Half-pint jars were my quarry. Which they had. As I put a couple of cases in my cart, she said, “My mom died.”

I said, “I am so sorry to hear that. How are you doing?”

She said, “It was March 20, 2019. She canned a lot.”

“Does it comfort you to use her stuff?”

She cocked her head, considering. Above the mask her eyes concentrated on the shelf, but she was seeing something else.

“Yeah, it does.” Her hand moved to a thing that claimed it was a “grease catcher,” a kind of modified coffee pot doohickey. A lot of doohickeys have come out since the pandemic started and newbies began entering traditional preservation methods with money to spend.

“My mom kept all the grease from when she cooked, but she kept it in a kind of an old skillet with a screen over it. It didn’t look like this.” Her hand rocked the coffeepot-esque thing back and forth in its box with a faint rattle.

“Lotsa weird devices coming out. You still have hers?”

“You know, I don’t know. I haven’t seen it in years, but there’s still some boxes to go through. Some days it feels like yesterday, but it was two years ago. She missed all this craziness.” Although her hand gestured to the empty shelf we both knew what she meant.

I didn’t say the other words we were thinking: two years ago today.

Aloud I asked, “Are you looking for lids?”

She nodded. Hence the side-eye when we met. We might have had to arm wrestle.

I grinned, then realized she couldn’t see it. “Aren’t we all? Last I bought some without price gouging was at Target. I don’t know if you live near one?”

Rural people will understand, but for those who wonder why I said that to someone in the local Walmart, these places are beacons for 40 miles around. Sure enough, she lived in a small town about 30 miles away. This was her nearest box store.

We exchanged Intel on where we’d last seen rings and flats, who was upping the prices, places to check on retail and the online markets. She told me about her mom’s biscuit recipe and her love for fresh tomatoes. She still uses her mom’s clothes peg bag and some very old pins that her mom had from her mother. “The smell of fresh laundry, or fresh cut tomatoes, bring her right back like she’s standing there.”

I nodded. “The smells get us every time, don’t they.”

We wished each other luck on the lid hunt, and started to move away.

She paused. “It was nice, talking about my mom. It’s been awhile since I just talked to somebody I don’t live with.”

“I liked hearing about her,” I said.

And we parted.