This evening I went to Walmart. Right after attending a dinner to wrap up the end of Royal Family Kids Camp. That’s the camp I led singing for in the mornings and then went to school to direct the last week of Robin Hood play practice in the evening. It was what you might call a busy week.
So, I’d just played my last note on the keyboard, smiled my last tired smile, and gotten into the car for the long drive home. But I needed a bouncy ball first. Preferably one with blue and green swirls. Turns out they make great crystal balls for rogue heros dressed up as gypsies (That would be Robin Hood and Little John, in case you were wondering.).
So, I went to Walmart. But first I had to look in the make-up section. For a gilded mirror that Prince John could smack over Sir Hiss’s head. Under two dollars please. We don’t want to break anything expensive. But Walmart doesn’t carry cheap gilded mirrors. Only I must mention the detour because it was there that I saw my first strange sight. It was a little midget. Three feet tall or so. Blonde hair. I think it was a girl. In fact, I do hope it was, cause she had on a knee-length dress, fashionable black pantyhose, and no shoes.
And I had always been under the delusion that Walmart was a respectable “no shirt, no shoes, no service” store like the local Pump and Pantry.
Well, I shrugged this one off (I’d just been through camp after all. Shoeless dwarves aren’t THAT odd.) and began making my way towards the toy section. Which is when I spotted the six-foot dude with the tennis shoes and stubble on his face. Not enough to be called a beard. And THAT wouldn’t have been so strange either except that he was wearing a dress. Quite a long, sunny one with puffed sleeves and a creamy yellow hue to it. Did I forget to mention the blonde wig?
I began to think I might need to set up an eye appointment in the very near future. The people around me walked on as though nothing was out of the usual. I swallowed and tried to do the same. To the toy section! Oh, except first I pulled off a nonchalant loop in the women’s clothes department (I felt just like Sherlock Holmes) to get a better look at the guy in the dress. Coming out of the loop, I saw the sixty-year old. The one with the frazzled beard - looked like he might have belonged to a motorcycle gang. Only he was obviously missing his bike and his buddies cause he was all hunched over his cart with his feet up on the bars and booking it down the aisle just as fast as he could go. I think I even heard a “vroom, vroom,” from him as he raced by.
That’s when I began to wonder if I had ever really left camp at all.
Well, I finally did make it back to the toy section. Found my one dollar blue-and-green swirled bouncy ball (Walmart might have disappointed me on the gilded mirror, but they sure came through on the fortune telling paraphernalia). But you can’t just buy any old crystal ball, you know. You have to make sure it’s bouncy enough. That’s very important. So, I was bouncing it down the aisle, moving along with all my years of latent basketball talent finally finding release in a display of brilliant dribbling. Except for that one second when the ball rather got away from me, and I went dashing after it, and the floor was a little slipperier than I expected it to be (not at all like the courts they play on in the pros), and, instead of coming to a smart, squealing halt, I slid and stuttered and very nearly fell flat on my nose. All right in front of a wide-eyed eight-year old who happened to be walking towards me at the time. She leveled me with a very strange look, I said something about being careful on the slippery floor, and she walked on without a word.
That’s when I began to worry that I might be going insane. I decided to get out of there before anyone else noticed. Payed $1.07 for the crystal ball (they add tax, you know). Got out to my car just as a van was pulling up, and I watched in horror as its two occupants unloaded for all the world as if they hadn’t just parked opposite a car full of 27 rubber duckies. And, really, how do you ignore a thing like THAT?
I got in my car and drove homewards. Thinking I had seen enough of the crazy side of life, and it was high time for a change of pace. Normality might be good after all. Little did I know about the cop who was going to pull me over on the way home. But that’s a different story . . .
