Leg-oooooooo Noooooo!

Forints Mayıs 20, 2022

By Jody Worsham

I am what you call a Wal-Mart frequent shopper/walker. My face appears on their security tape entering and leaving their store more often than anyone in town. It is not that I am an avid shopper; it’s just that I find myself with many separate hours to kill while I wait for ballet lessons, violin lessons, Boy Scouts, basketball or whatever to be over. Because of this, I am acutely aware of their clearance aisles and their ever changing rotation and migration of merchandise and have a closet similar to a Wal-Mart warehouse.

At Christmas, not trusting anyone over four feet five inches, the eight-year-old had me put his many Wal-Mart gift cards in the safe. This served a dual purpose. It prevented impulse buying on his part, and I could see which defective toys made it back to the return counter at Wal-Mart after Christmas. On one of my recent walking tours, I noticed all the Christmas junk toys were gone, and the good stuff like Legos, were now being marked down. Time to retrieve the boy and the gift cards.

As the Wal-Mart greeter called me by name, we headed for the toy aisle. As usual, the clearance Legos were Legos no one wanted. The eight-year-old headed straight for the good stuff. When he showed me the box, three things immediately jumped out at me, first the price. When did a toy cost as much a mid-size compact? Second, how can 512 Legos fit into such a small package? And third, why was a grenade wired to the box?

I had promised myself that I would bite my tongue before I said anything negative about his selection. It was his money, his choice, his Lego. With my teeth clamped tightly on my tongue, he put his selection in the shopping cart. Why is it that every Wal-Mart has at least one cart with a wheel that is locked, lopsided, or lists to the left and I always end up with that one? We lurched toward the checkout stand with the loaded Legos.

As the cashier scanned and removed the detonating device from the Lego box, the eight-year-old pulled out his gift cards. Card number one had either been next to my cell phone or had been used and forgotten because it was blank. I bite my tongue. Card number two was ok as was card three and four and my tongue began to swell. Card number five was for McDonald’s and so could not be used to purchase Legos, and card number six completed the purchase with $5.22 to spare.

“What’s the matter Mom? Are you crying?”