Family Adventure--Wal-Mart

I love my DarlingCaveGeek. I really do. But to take him to Wal-Mart with me is not my favorite thing. Going to Wal-Mart in general is torture to the poor man and am not sure why we ever do it. Possibly that our minds are slipping and we forget the last hundred times before were rarely a good idea.

What is the problem shopping as a family? For starters, he parks in the wrong place. I have my own parking place at Wal-Mart don’tcha know. I am there so much that there is a parking spot just for me. And they told me that if I will make just one more visit each week, they will name an aisle after me. Okay…I exaggerate. Just a bit. But I do always park in almost the same exact place.

I don’t want the parking spot by the door. I don’t mind walking a little bit. What I want is that parking spot near the cart return.

This odd little quirk was born when the boys were infants and toddlers. It was fed by the terrifying stories of cars being stolen with children in them. So I always park by the cart returns.

When they were younger, I would not put the children in until the groceries were loaded and I would put the cart in the return and carrying Boo and holding Roo’s hand I would then buckle the boys in.

Now they get in, I have auto-locks on both vehicles I load the groceries and keep the alarm on the remote handy. I am prepared if nothing else. But I digress, as I am wont to do. The point is I park by the cart return. The one by the garden center. That way I can tour the seasonal items when I first get there. Every. Time. I. Go. It’s one of my small pleasures. Humor me. If I can’t go to Hobby Lobby I go through the garden center. A good day is going alone, stopping at Hobby Lobby on the way and then going through the garden center. I am digressing again, aren’t I?

DCG drives around looking for the closest parking spot to the front door. The front door. This might take twenty years minutes. What is wrong with that man??? Then he makes a mad dash in and the race is on. I have purposely ambled slowly. Slower and slower until he is so far ahead of me that he cannot possibly hear me and then stopped. And stood there. Just to wait to see if he will notice that the boys and I are not with him. He’s gotten quite far without noticing.

Now what is odd is that not only does he lose the fact that he has traveling companions, but also he rarely has a clue why we are going there. He never has the list. The list is my department.

Where is it that the man is headed in such a hurry? Well to the only place in Wal-Mart I avoid like the plague. The electronics section. Forget that we came for soup and crackers. Forget that we need milk and cheese. Health and beauty aids? Pshaw. It is the electronics aisle for him.

So usually we make a deal. He takes the boys and checks out all the techno-geek cheap stuff, the movies, the games and takes the boys to the toy section. And I do the dirty work OOooops get the groceries. Then we use our cell phones to find each other and discuss the fact that we really don’t need anything else and wind our way to the checkout.

That would be where one of us usually takes the boys to the car and the other purchases the life-sustaining merchandise from this acreage of retail. If I get the joy of taking the boys to argue incessantly wait patiently in the car…I have to remember where it is that he parked. And what vehicle we took. If I get to stand in line for ten hours ten minutes waiting to pay, then at least I can put the cell phone to good use once again and ask him to stand up by the car and wave at me so I can get out of the place.

There is nothing that says "family adventure" like a trip to Wal-Mart.