I stood outside my house with a blank look on my face. I was extremely pale, and I shivered nonstop in the scalding hot afternoon. A neighbor came out of her house and approached me.
"What's wrong? It looks like you've been abducted by aliens or something," she said.
"I'm not sure what happened, but last night I was not in the company of humans," I said.
She then asked me to explain myself, so I proceeded to tell her about my experience at a place called Wal-Mart.
I was hanging out with three friends, and we all stared at each other in boredom. Awkward silence overshadowed any crickets. A friend spoke and suggested we purchase Scrabble at a store. Unfortunately, I knew of no such store open this late, but he insisted that there is a Wal-Mart Supercenter open at this time.
I once heard a rumor from someone that this place existed. That person told me that Wal-Mart underpays their employees so that customers can save 11 cents on a bag of Funions. I wasn't sure of the validity of this rumor, but I was willing to drive to Wal-Mart to obtain a Scrabble board game.
When we arrived at Wal-Mart, I was amazed at the size of the store. The parking lot alone was massive with several recreational vehicles camping out for the night.
As we walked toward the building, a male in a truck honked at the two attractive females in our group. Just in case he didn't get his point across, he followed that up with an extended reenactment of the honk. He should have finished the job with a whistle and an inappropriate comment about their booties.
The moment we walked inside, an older man, who looked petrified that he had to work at his age, greeted us. I looked around at the customers, and they were not humans. They were a different life form.
The jeans these "people" wore had elastic waistbands rather than belt loops and a button and zipper. The men's T-shirts didn't cover their stomachs, and the women's T-shirts went past their knees. Mullets and perms covered their heads, and in the not-so-rare occasion, the men sported the perms and the women had the mullets.
We found the Scrabble game after trudging our way through the electronics, automotive and mule-feed sections of the store.
We decided to get some ice cream as well. One of my friends picked up a box of Dibs, which is a ball of ice cream encapsulated by a hard chocolate shell. A woman walked by and decided to tell us that she thinks Dibs taste weird. Perhaps we should have gone with corn nuts or Skoal, which were found in her shopping cart.
We went to the self-checkout line. At this point, we serve as paying customers and unpaid employees. I paid for my items, but as I was putting them in bags, a perm-mulleted lady started scanning her items. I wasn't even finished, and her mindset was like "I'm here, I'm checking out, and I don't care." She wore a hard plastic garden visor. She must have won it at a county fair raffle or perhaps a two-for-one garage sale. Anyway, I decided not to say anything to her. I took our bags, and we went home to play Scrabble.
After telling my neighbor the story, I felt much better. I looked over at her, and she was very pale and shivering nonstop. I didn't know what to do, so I went inside and drank some pink lemonade. Two weeks later, she is still out there shivering. You can come over and look at her if you want. I'll even set up some lawn chairs I acquired at K-Mart the other day.
Ryan Lorenzo is a journalism senior. Reach him at ryan.lorenzo@asu.edu.
