In Walmart

Rocket Boy and I do NOT like Walmart, its policies and politics, how it destroys small town businesses, doesn't pay health insurance, all that kind of thing. But when you live in Ridgecrest, sometimes you just have to go to Walmart. There's a Kmart too, but it's much farther away from us and it doesn't have nearly the inventory. Many times I've gone to Kmart first, not found what I was looking for, and ended up at stupid Walmart instead. Oh well.

Today I stopped in at Walmart for a few items: some plastic containers for the bathroom, more wooden clothespins, and a new alarm clock. I found everything I was looking for and headed for the checkout lanes. As is usual at Walmart, all around me were hugely fat people, the kind you stop and look at because their fat bulges so peculiarly. I know I should not do that. I have been a Weight Watcher since I was 16, I should have more compassion. I do have compassion, actually. I don't look at these people and think "what fat pigs," I look at them and think, "oh how miserable they must be, they must feel so trapped by their weight." I also fantasize about being a Weight Watchers leader and helping them lose the weight. But I still stare at them. It's like staring at a car accident (which I also do, with great interest).

I got in a short line behind a nicely dressed old lady, who was behind a young, slim, Arab-looking man and his pregnant wife and two young sons. The Arab-looking man was buying tons of stuff in two carts, and the old lady was joking with him about how much time he was taking. One lane over there was a colossally fat white man (in shorts, natch) and he was talking to the old lady too. It appeared that they attended the same church. The man had been watching some sort of video, and he was telling the old lady that the church should buy a copy of it. He was talking about one of the people in the video, and he said "He's a Christian, you know," in that way that people do when what they mean is "Only Christians are worth my time."

At once I began a fantasy which involved not only being this man's Weight Watcher leader, but also helping him understand that people of other faiths such as Jews and Muslims, and even atheists, are also worth his time, and also that Christians can be bad people too, there is nothing about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior that makes you any nicer than anyone else. This fantasy lasted me all the way out of the store and over to Albertson's, where I observed a young female clerk on a cigarette break, which got me started on a fantasy about watching her growing old before her time and having to go on oxygen (my fantasies about smokers are meaner -- I don't have much sympathy for them).

Albertson's was full of fat people too. I didn't buy any ice cream.