by JRM

November 29, 2006

Much has been made of late about the type of folks one may encounter while shopping at various discount stores.  Most of the comments talk about how depressing it is to walk around a Wal-Mart or a K-Mart and just look at the people that either work or shop there. While there is no shortage of folks with any number of dental abnormalities, giant hairy moles or unkempt, morbidly obese physiques - I doubt that the people reporting these facts are truly “depressed” for anybody.  Most of them are downright happy about their misfortune.

Your mother was right when she told you that the bully at school was only picking on you because he wanted to feel better about himself. On some level, that’s the real reason that anybody makes fun of anybody.  I do have a theory about a handful of things that are just inherently funny regardless of hurt feelings or boosted egos.  Some day I will direct you to my column on German businessmen at the beach. But all-in-all the above stated is true…

So we went Christmas tree shopping the other day.  First of all, I hate Christmas.  It’s a long story and you wouldn’t care…Let’s just say that the mere mention of the holidays makes me want to vomit all over those bastards at Ogilvy and start a fist fight with every annoying bell- ringer that blocks my access to the friggin’ bookstore. Stupid Christmas.

But I’ve got kids and they like Santa and there’s a small chance that they might grow up relatively normal if I put the effort into it…So we went Christmas tree shopping the other day.  We used to buy our trees from the Boy Scout troop who set up shop in the parking lot
that is near our house.  It cost a ton more than the big department stores, but it was worth it. I felt like I was helping some kid get to camp or something.  It made the whole tree-buying experience almost bearable.  Then one year I picked up a tree by its trunk so that the wife could examine it and when I took my hand off the tree, my palm was completely green. Those little knot-tying compass-reading canoe-tripping punks were spray-painting their freakin’ product and it still cost $15 more than Home Depot.  I’m sure I will get some e-mail
telling me that it wasn’t paint but rather some sort of sealant shit that makes the tree look healthy.  I’m not buyin’ it.  So we don’t go to the Boy Scout scalpers anymore.

So I found myself walking around the “nursery” lot of a giant retailer with my family looking for a stupid Christmas tree.  We located one that didn’t completely suck.  My hands were covered in sap rather than a Dutch-Boy product.  Everything seemed like it could work out at a minimum of suckiness.  We took our tree to where the checkout-teen was supposed to be stationed.  I prepared myself for the smart-assed Christmas tree station of apathy that I had come to know and love.  Nobody.  The register was off, the little space heater just sat there lifelessly.  We were on our own.  

I did my best to feed my tree through the little web-thingy that wraps up the product.  I was pretty pleased that I didn’t screw it up too bad.  It almost actually worked.  At this point my family discussed just how the hell we were going to pay for the thing.  We had almost
decided to go get one of those flatbed things to wheel the tree out when my daughter ruled it prudent to go ahead and crap her pants.  I decided that I couldn’t stand it anymore and I slung the tree up on my shoulder and headed for the inside registers.  My wife, son and poopy-pants daughter quickly followed behind as I nearly rammed a Christmas tree up the ass of a dozen or so unsuspecting shoppers. Of course, they only had two lanes open and in one of the lanes was a 98 year old woman with 267 items.  I quickly made my way to the other lane and examined the woman who was to provide me checkout services.

She clumsily shot me a blank and cross-eyed smile that told the entire story of how she came to pass objects over an infrared scanner for her living.  Her teeth, while there, were most definitely not in the traditional shape that I have come to expect when someone opens their mouth.  I fully anticipated that she might call the manager because she thought I had chopped down the landscaping or something.  One thing I did know for sure was that no
matter what, this was going to take some time and a lot of explaining.

I took the tree down from my shoulder and poised myself for a long discussion with a simpleton about how capitalism works.  She promptly pulled the scanner-gun thing out from beneath the register, shot the tag on the tree, told me the total and asked how I would be
paying.  She finished her Olympic-caliber checkout routine with the sentence;

“You know…you could have just torn the tag off of the branch here and saved yourself the trouble of carrying a Christmas tree through the store.”

I immediately paid the woman, put the tree and my family in the car and drove across town to K-Mart to see if they were hiring.  I am such a retard.

      
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