Ahhh, The Wonderful World of Walmart

Those who know me well know that I don't swear. Ever. I have been married to my husband for almost 9 years and he has heard me say a swear word one time. And immediately after, I yelled at him and told him he was a bad influence and told him he was no longer allowed to swear in front of me. (To this day he still gets a good tongue-lashing when he lets a word slip). When someone asks me, why don't you swear? I always just say "because." I don't really have a reason. I just don't. Well, from now on, I have a good reason......Did you know that swearing in public is against the law? No? I didn't either. That is, until last night.

My night started out no different than any other. I had to go to the grocery store. I had been putting it off because I knew the store would be packed with Christmas shoppers. Much to my surprise, when I pulled into the parking lot, it was relatively empty.
At one point I found myself standing alone in the cereal aisle....not another person in sight. I was worried for a second that I had been sucked into another dimension. An empty Walmart aisle is unheard of! Little did I know this was the calm before the storm.

So, I was meandering through the aisles, and dare I say....enjoying it...a little. I started up the juice aisle and saw there was a young man....we'll call him Roy... in an electric wheelchair/cart thingy coming towards me. He was the only other person in the aisle. He was maybe 22. I wondered for a second as to why Roy was in the wheelchair. As I strolled closer I noticed he had one foot that was bare. It was swollen and black and blue. I noticed he was talking on his cell phone as I walked past him and he was complaining about some sort of verbal altercation he had just had with another shopper....who we will call Larry.

All of a sudden, Larry comes running around the end of the aisle (along with about 6 of his closest friends)towards where I am standing beside Roy. Larry is irate. He is screaming. "Who you talking about %$#@&!?" Roy hops up...and when I say "hops" I mean, literally, he hopped...on one leg...and starts screaming back. I couldn't have been more than two steps away when I heard a loud CRASH and turned around to see Larry throwing Roy into the shelf of crackers. Small boxes of goldfish crackers went flying everywhere.

I picked up my pace and ran out of the end of the aisle and turned to see what was happening. The two GROWN men then proceeded to beat on each other.

At this point in the story I have to interject. So, if you were a man......in an electric cart....with only one good foot....and you felt like picking a fight, would you pick a fight with a robust-looking man accompanied by a small posse? NO..? Yeah, me either. So anyhoo...

Roy was screaming out expletives. Swear words, curse words, racial slurs, every four letter word you can think of....you name it, he said it...and then some! Most of these words were not appropriate for my adult ears to hear...let alone the little ears that were unfortunate enough to be within earshot.....which was at least half the store. Roy had a great set of lungs, if ya know what I mean.

I expected, at any point, to hear them come over the loudspeaker and say "Attention Walmart shoppers, will the morons that are fight in aisle 7 please leave the freakin' store!!" That's what I would have done if I was the Walmart manager.

Along with Larry's posse was his son. He was maybe 10 years old. He was yelling "Daddy! Stop! Please! Stop!" It was heartbreaking! So after about 20 seconds another shopper.....a big, burly guy, stepped in and tried to break them up. It ended up taking him and 4 other Walmart employees 2 security guys and 2 guys from the meat department)to pull them apart and separate them.

I just walked into the next aisle and went on with my shopping. Contemplating why, certain men, were willing to throw punches over the dumbest things. So, I had made my way up to the frozen food section when I saw a Walmart security guy, the big, burly peacemaker guy and a sheriff, walk into view. The burly guy pointed to me. Oh crap. I had a feeling my ice cream was going to be melted before I could get it home....

So, I had to go talk to the police and tell them what I had seen. When I stepped outside there were SIX police cars with their lights all flashing. At this point, I was really wishing I HAD been sucked into another dimension in the cereal aisle.

Larry was arrested for throwing the first punch and Roy was arrested for....can you guess it?? ..........Using profanity in public!

So, the next time you are in the produce section at the supermarket and you grab an apple and a whole bunch more fall on the floor, choose the words you shout out carefully!! :)

P.S. I now know I am a true blogger (as if there was nay doubt before). The entire time I was watching the fight and staring at the flashing lights in the parking lot I was so bummed because I kept thinking...."Dang! I wish I could have brought my camera. This story would be so much better when I blog about it if it had pictures to go with it!"