WALMART.

Location : The deep deep South.

July 10th, 2016

Last night my 17 year old daughter and I went to Walmart…..

It is summer vacation for the kids (daughter- Moo age 17, Son- Bean age 10). Not only are my children home all day; Moo is in charge of her brother and another little boy.

We are under a heat wave. We….. aka the dirty dirty south.

The kids are forced to stay inside unless they want to swim in the hot thick stagnant air that assaults you when you step outside. Making it hard to breath let alone see with the sweat that drips into your eyes. …instantly.

Needless to say….. the trip to the bowels of hell…..aka Walmart was necessary.

Those children; whom I refer to lovingly as…THOSE LITTLE BASTARDS, eat me out of house and home….. True story. I had been putting it off for a week…. Not wanting to venture out in the heat after putting in 12 hours at work, and dealing with the less than stellar clientele that Walmart usually hosts (no…. I am not a snob, I’m also not a gehto hood rat who beats my children in public or a moo-moo hair in rollers with a shower cap on my head- out in public- person either).

Back to “my daughter and I went to Walmart”, we loaded up on groceries, paper, cleaning, bathroom products, dog and cat food (the animals are for another story) and art supplies.

My Cart runneth over……. Literally.

While I got in line- behind a family who I was mentally questioning if they were inbred — I sent Moo to try and find a cheap bathing suit for her to take on an upcoming beach trip she had planned. For two reasons. … 1. To get her attention off of the inbred family, because she is a clever sarcastic little thing and inevitably would say something to make her momma loose her cool. And 2. To get her attention away from the stuff I was putting on the conveyor belt- momma snuck a few sweet treats that I didn’t want those LITTLE BASTARDS to get a hold of.

Tick….tick….tick…almost done scanning my stuff…. The cashier, looks up at me and asks, “ya paying cash for all this”?

Uhhhh- (internally scratching my head), “no ma’am, I don’t carry cash”,

The cashier looks me in the eye and said,

“ya, I hear you Boo, I don’t pay cash for my groceries either, I don’t understand these people who do, why would they do that”?

Oh-kay…. Hmmmmm, now I am really scratching my head wondering, Why in the hell does it make a difference. … really…. I know people who carry lots of cash. Like wads…. I dont, because personally I don’t have the balls or funds to do so, what an odd odd conversation.

She gives me my total. .. To be honest I was pretty impressed with myself. I wanted to spend $250..ish…. And my total was $298.

Not bad, not bad at all for being out of everything.

I grab my bank card and swipe…. The cashier looks at me….and asks, “thought you said you weren’t payin’ cash- Sha…”

I look at my bank card, look back at her, look at my bank card again. … ummm am I missing something? This is not cash. At. All. Not even green, no dead presidents, no “Norvus ordo selorum”, just a plastic bank card.

Sooooo I smile and said to the dumb struck cashier, “I don’t carry cash”, she rolls her eyes and proceeds to tell me, “no I meant food stamps… why you don’t use your food stamps, that right there (she is pointing to my bank card) that’s what I meant as cash”

Really? WHAT THE FUCK, REALLY? At this point- MY. MIND. IS. BLOWN.

I take a deep cleansing breath and look her dead in the eye. My eyebrow ticks up as calmly as I can muster state….. “Boo…. I have been paying my own way since I was 18. I served 4 years overseas for OUR country, to come home to no available jobs, but I still PAID MY OWN WAY, the past two years the Oilfield (90% of our community including my husband’s job revolves around THE industry )had tanked, we almost lost our home and my car was actually repossessed…still…… WE FOUND A WAY, what makes you think I could get food stamps, we wouldn’t qualify, even if we applied.”

She shakes her head, “no ma’am everyone qualifies, we all get food stamps, I even sell mine. Cause I don’t need that much”.

She kinda gasps at this point, as says.. “oh, it must be just for us BLACK people”.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD… I SEE RED. I am so pissed my vision starts to black around the edges, and when I get to this point it has NEVER ended well.

Then as if there was an angel on my shoulder… my clever, sacastic daughter walks up with a bathing suit in hand, taking a long looks at my face, her lip twitch up and she states, “ohhhh what did I miss momma” I laughed out loud. Paid the ignorant, clueless cashier for the suit and left Walmart.

Moo looks at me, smiles shakes her head and states, “pick your battles momma”.

How? How can we fix this divide? What can one person do?

I will save it for another day….for now.

Lil