Wal-mart and Hell, but I repeat myself!

*this post is primarily for the purpose of garnering sympathy which would otherwise be left ungarnered due to my inability to whine at anyone right now.

Have you ever noticed that nobody ever smiles at Wal-mart? I should begin at the beginning. I went to Wal-mart this morning. But even that is not the beginning. The beginning is that at some point in the past few days, I sprained my ankle. A sprain is no big deal, so I iced it in the evenings and planned to simply walk it off. Especially at first, when it was no more than a slight twist, I figured it was nothing to stress about, nobody wants to hear about these dumb little injuries that never acutally affect our lives. Unfortunately, as I ignored it, it got worse. And silly me, I iced it some more and told myself to get over it. And as would yet add to my stupidity, it just happens to be warming up in to springtime weather here, otherwise known as cute shoe season. Of course, cute shoes are rarely sensible shoes, especially for injured ankles, and Saturday when I had a grand day of meeting friends and doing exciting things planned, I chose to wear a pair of my cutest but least sensible shoes.

OK, Nancy, take responsibility for your own choices, you choose to wear cute shoes, you pay the price. Be smart.

But that's not all! Wait, keep reading, there is more! Of course yesterday morning my foot was swollen. That is in fact the natural consequence of my choice. And I accepted that and iced it most of the day yesterday and determined to walk it off and endure it. No whining... yet. But then last night it kind of started throbbing. And badly. I wrapped it in ice for the night but was still up all night as the pain gradually spread from just my foot and ankle to my whole leg, and I started to get sort of feverish too. Yup, that's right, from twisted ankle to fever. Huh? Yeah, I don't know either. All I really know is that by the time I tried to get ready for work this morning, I couldn't even touch the bottom of my foot let along put any pressure on it, and I hadn't slept much and I was feeling pretty nauseated, simply because pain tends to make me nauseated. So I called in sick. I hate using my sick days on actually being sick. Don't we all?

I got up and hopped to the living room and took a few aspirin, hopefully to reduce the swelling and therefore the pain. Did you know that the reason aspirin expires is because it loses its potency over time? Yeah, there really isn't much danger in taking expired aspirin, it's just that it might eventually stop working. As mine did. So by 9 in the morning, not only was my foot swelling and my fever spiking, I was beginning to be able to walk simply because the swelling was making my foot numb. So I headed out to run my errand to the bank and to pick up some new painkillers. And since Wal-mart is closest to the bank that I needed to stop at, I chose to go there. I have only been there precicely 2 times in the past 3 years. I don't like Wal-mart. It's dirty and disorganized and depressing. The first time was in order to look through the $5 movie bin. I didn't find anything there because everytime I got close enough to actually look at the movie, I would literally be pushed out of the way. Really? For a $5 movie on a Tuesday evening, we are pushing? Are we grown ups? It's no wonder the kids I work with act the way they do when you see grown ups acting this way. At any rate I went this morning with low expectations. In and out, pick up some painkiller and some orange soda (because orange soda is what settles my tummy when it feels yucky and I have to take pills). But of course, it couldn't be that easy. After hobbling past lots of frowny-faced people on my way in to the store, I found the aisle with the pills and again experienced the Wal-mart behavior. That's right, even in the pharmaceutical aisle, apparently, people at Wal-mart push you out of the way. Frowny-faced people, even. They were for some reason rushed to pick up generic $0.98 ibuprofin? OK, I will grant that if you need to be picking up painkillers you might have a reason to be a grumpy face. But what about the lady who blocked the orange soda? She parked her cart in front of the fridge and refused to move. When I tried to go around it, she actually moved her cart to continue blocking me. Whether or not it was intentional, I never found out, because she had Wal-mart grumpy face too. At the soda aisle? I stepped back and waited for her to finish up and leave, rather than approaching her. No sense in making her day any worse than her face already displayed it to be. After I got my orange soda I proceeded to the checkout where I was once again blocked by a different grumpy face. And this time, not just blocked in a stationary sense, but in a moving sense. As in, I walked towards a checkout station and she walked in front of me, and if I stopped she stopped and If I walked she walked and all of this while I was trying to navigate on my lumpy foot. The thing is, none of the stations really had a line, all of them were open, and yet, I couldn't get to any of them because every time I walked towards one, I was blocked by grumpy face lady. Finally she stopped to examine an endcap (I know, it doesn't sound like this would take a long time or be a big deal, but please understand the movement had de-numbed my foot and I was in severe pain. I probably had a grumpy Wal-mart face too) and I was able to move past her towards the self checkout.

Now I can understand in this economy how spending money might make you a grumpy face. And I can even understand that being forced to spend it at Wal-mart would make you more of a grumpy face. But we are all in the same boat people. Are there really that many people in the workd that never learned manners? Or has the world just gone entirely crazy?

All I really know is that at Target, nobody ever pushed me out of the way.