Cult of the Creepy Yellow Smiley Face.

I hate Wal Mart. I hate the blue vests. I hate their warehouse style buildings. I hate that creepy disembodied smiley face that floats around the store in the commercials. Yet every so often I find myself venturing there. Mostly for cleaning products or something that is significantly cheaper than other stores that don't pick up their employees at the border. Tonight was one of those days. The ten dollar difference for curtains that will supposedly keep my room warmer forced me to suck up my hatred for the place, deem myself a hypocrite and go traipsing into the store with my head held high... until the creepy greeter says hi to me, of course. Unfortunately tonight, I didn't even get that far. I was almost run over in the parking lot by a giant truck with light up spinners squealing its tires down a lane, only to stop in the handicapped spot in front of the store. It was probably the closest thing I'll ever see to this:

I'm the person who always eagerly awaits to see if the person who emerges from the vehicle in a handicap spot is, in fact, handicapped. I can't help it, I'm always hoping for a pirate with a peg leg... or a midget, preferably one of the Roloffs. Plus, I wanted to face the man (or woman) who almost took me out of this miserable life. The person who hopped out of this vehicle and started rapidly waddling towards to the door had no visible handicap other than he was extremely large. The woman who I presume to be his wife or girlfriend started running full speed behind him (that's how quickly my big little penguin was moving) yelling that there's a bathroom in the McDonalds he can use and he better make it because "it was his dumb ass who wanted Mexican." It was at this moment, I knew it was going to be an elegant evening.

As soon as I walk in the door, I encounter my first group of Wal Mart eccentrics. It was a group of guys, yes, big, muscular, jock-looking guys, in awe because they think they just saw Ryan Reynolds shopping for a coffee pot. At first I assumed that maybe this Ryan Reynolds was just one of their classmates who coincidentally had the same name as Mr. Suck-it-werewolf boy, I-look-better-without-a-shirt... buuut then they started talking about how he is playing Green Lantern. Who knows? Maybe it was Ryan Reynolds. I heard he's in town filming a movie... 2 years ago.

Needless to say, I did not bolt to the coffee pot section and continued on my merry way to the curtain aisle in hopes of exiting the second level of hell as quickly as possible. The curse of Wal Mart is that it is a lot like hell- a labyrinth of useless shit you wander through for eternity and occasionally run into someone you know or some dipshit who tries to talk to you. This time it was some dipshit who tried to make incredibly awkward conversation with me. I picked out the curtain rods before finding the curtains and had them in my hands when some little old redneck man (maybe not that old, but the missing teeth tacked on a few years) asked me if I was going hand curtains "with them things." To this I replied, "No, I need something to hang the woodland creatures I've collected over the years," grabbed my curtains and ran away.

Then I was almost hit by a runaway Hoveround driven by a group of teenage girls. This was the last straw. When my friends and I tried to go through the store in a motorized wheelchair, we got thrown out of the store. I hate to think that the store in Latrobe is a higher class Wal Mart than the one in my new town, but clearly this store does not give two shits about high school kids who have nothing better to do and no older friends/ siblings to buy them alcohol. Maybe I should offer next time I see them.

I finished up my Wal Mart excursion with a refreshing sweet tea...aka my crack addiction. The McDonalds in this Wal Mart is clearly more evil than the stand alone Mc-y-D's. They make you pour your own sweet tea there and I have an overwhelming fear that the barrel will run out before my glass is filled. Like I said, it's basically a crack addiction.

All in all, it was an exciting trip. I picked up my curtains, curtain rods, clothing dye, a black cloth, new Nikes, a shirt that says "I come in peace" and a smiley face mask... who says Wal Mart's an evil cult corporation? A nice man in a smiley face mask gave me free Kool Aid!