There was never just a “standard” trip to Wal-Mart for us,
there was always some excitement and it usually ended up with us being
trespassed or at least kicked out for the day. We like to wreak havoc of an odd
order, and confuse everybody we came into contact with. Today was like most
days for us: we were high on mushrooms and weed, and we were giddy with
amusement.
Like I said, we’d been kicked out of most Wal-Mart’s, but in
the big city there are so many of them to choose from. They line the corners
near highways, adorn malls, and highlight those middle-of-nowhere parking lots,
and it seems that when you leave one through the exit (which for some fucking
reason is the left side) it leads you through the entrance (which for some fucking
reason is on the left side) of another. It’s a perpetual infinity of the big
chain: they’re literally everywhere now.
We like the toy aisles because they are the most colorful
and that plays with our demented minds and contracts the zygomaticus at a more
intense level than in say, a dog food aisle. Also, you can see kids doing
stupid things, and parents being horrible people. The toy aisle brings out the
hope in children, and the despondency in parents.
“Mommy, can I have this!?
A little child pulls down a boldly colored spinning unicorn thing and smiles
brightly at an inattentive parent. There is no response and the child throws it
on the floor with a tantrum which is when the parent snaps to action with a
pointed finger and a sharp scowl.
All of this is amusing and confusing to us and we turn our
minds elsewhere. In the next aisle we find a baby that claims to make real
poops when you feed it a special formula that is included in the box. This is
our time to shine.
About half way down the aisle is an attractive blonde-headed
employee who is stocking shelves mindlessly and listening to something on her
wireless earphones. She doesn’t seem to notice our demeanor but surely will
when I shout to her in a frantic waving manner. They always pay attention when
they’re afraid, or if they think they’re going to get into trouble.
One time we stole Wal-Mart vests from a locker room and went
around with clipboards telling people they were in trouble for abusing break privileges.
We claimed we were corporate auditors and that they had to clean out their
lockers and go home and expect their last check in the mail. It worked twelve
times because we figured that virtually all employees of every company abuse
their break privileges. With a dozen employees now missing from the store, we
were free to steal thousands in electronics and food.
“Hey! Is this real shit?” I yelled to the stunned
shelf-stocker from fifty feet away.
Brad chimed in as he pointed to the box I was holding, “In here!”
I couldn’t see her nametag from this distance, so I decided
her name was Amanda. Amanda was staring at us with her mouth open; she looked
like a sunfish just pulled out of a hole drilled in the middle of a frozen
lake. Her left hand slowly lowered down as the weight of her scanner overcame
the mind’s subconscious desire to balance properly. Her body tilted slightly to
compensate for her empty right hand. She was frightened.
I decided we should walk toward her with the box so she
could answer our questions and maybe we could get her to eat some mushrooms
with us and have an orgy. We have tried this move countless times with no accomplishment.
As we approached, she nervously and slowly crossed her arms
in front of her but kept her mouth open. She remained quiet which I knew upset
Brad because he had to know if the baby toy contained actual fecal matter, or
if there was a process that happened within the $49.98 (rolled back recently
from $58.98) toy that created a natural type of feces unique to this particular
doll. He would also ask if there was an African-American version for sale
because he is black and are they racist? I’ve seen it a hundred times. Not with
the poop-doll, this was inimitable. He liked to add to the “environment” by
claiming he was black.
I’ve known Brad since he was a kid but we didn’t get along
until we found out we both liked the same drugs and mischief. We sort of found
out by accident at a party when I dropped a bag of weed in front of him and we
started to talk about finer things. He was weird, really weird. So am I. Brad
is about five feet tall, morbidly obese, and has red curly hair and freckles so
sometimes he passes as a black guy in certain lighting.
“Does this baby make poop, or does the poop already exist in
its most processed form and we are just supposed to squeeze it through the
plastic baby into some diaper then change it?” Brad asked.
Before she could ask what had just happened, I said, “Because
we don’t want to pay $50 for a doll that doesn’t make its own genetically exclusive
feces. We’ve been fooled before.”
Amanda surely had never been so horribly cornered and disordered
in all of her life. We were used to this response, so we continued.
“We would like you to find out for us. Can you get a manager
please?” I asked curiously.
Amanda nodded and hastily turned away and scampered off at a
terrified gallop. She never looked back, which meant she would probably never
tell anybody about what just happened, or she would tell social media about the
whack-jobs you find at Wal-Mart, or she would actually find somebody to kick us
out. Either way, we had some time to fix
the baby.
Brad pulled out his pocket knife and carefully unsealed the
cardboard bottom of the box. You don’t want to cut the plastic, or nobody will
ever buy the toy, so you have to get everything out from the bottom, which
everything is usually secured from anyhow. As it always does, the doll and all
of its accompaniments slid out in a tight wad of recyclable organized chaos. He
cut a couple zip ties that held on the package of “special formula.” It was
enclosed in a plastic box about the size of a cigarette pack and it was easy to
dump out which I did on a nearby shelf. I tasted some of it, and it tasted
nothing like poop. Brad had already
taken his pants down enough to shit on the floor a little which I could smell. (He
had an incredibly poor diet of McDonald’s, cheap beer, and beef jerkey.) This
always made us laugh and I knew we would be out of control if we didn’t focus.
We stifled our laughter and I put on a latex glove I had in
my pocket and picked some of the puddle of poop while he wiped his ass with the
hair of a Mermaid Barbie doll from the shelf behind us. It was hard for me to
get a grip of the shit as it had the viscosity of a marmalade that seemed to
melt in my hand. It took several scoops to fill the empty box, but I was proud
of my triumph so I raised it up to show Brad. We smiled at each other with that
devilish grin we were accustomed to under the circumstances, and he got out his
bottle of glue and sealed it closed, and back on to the package. We struggled
to get everything back into the display packaging, but we did it, and sealed
that as well and put it back with the rest of the dolls, all of which were
white.
We threw all of the evidence behind various toys for
somebody to find later when Amanda peered around the corner and was followed by
a much more intimidating employee who wanted us to leave.
“I want you to leave.” He said sternly. His name was also
Brad, and ironically, her name was actually Amanda T. This is when we started a
laughter that could not be contained.
To be continued...
To be continued...
