A Funny Thing Happened on Our Way Out of Walmart...

First and foremost, this isn't a blog about an experience I had with a Walmart so much as it is a blog about an experience I happened to have had while I was at a Walmart. There is a difference, obviously. While I've had plenty of reasons to develop a sense of disdain for Walmart over the years (case in point, this post from all the way back in March of 2011 - "Reason #340,781 to avoid Wal-Mart") I'm not going to drag the company into the mud when it's not deserved. No, this is more of a look inside the minds of the kind of people you encounter while at Walmart.

My wife & I have something of a routine on Sundays. We typically get up around 7:30 AM, get ready for church, go to church, and then when we're dismissed from the worship service we go to Walmart to pick up our provisions for the week. (Occasionally we'll have lunch out with my Mom as well but that doesn't happen every week.) We attend Cornerstone Community Church in Orangeburg, South Carolina so, of course, we go to the Walmart in Orangeburg. Could we shop elsewhere? Sure we could, but we go to Walmart because of the same reason everyone else goes to Walmart - it's convenient and, generally speaking, the prices are better there.

This past Sunday (September 21, 2014) was different than usual as that particular day we were on our way back from a brief overnight trip to Myrtle Beach, SC. Our plan was to drop off our bags at home then come into Orangeburg to get our supplies as well as pick up our dog, who was being looked after by my Mom.

It was around 3 PM by the time we made it to Walmart. I know my wife well enough to know that she wasn't looking forward to being there at that time of day. Going to Walmart early on a Sunday morning as we normally do (almost invariably we're out of church by 10:30 AM) is ideal for a number of reasons, primary among them being the fact that there aren't as many people there, meaning it's a bit easier to get in and out than it would be otherwise. Judging by the volume of cars in the parking lot, it looked like a fair segment of the population of Orangeburg had beaten us to the punch. To show you how different my wife and I are in regard to our individual attitudes about this shopping excursion, my only fear as we made our way into the store that day was whether or not there would be any good bananas left.

Because, priorities.

We rounded up our supplies (Jill gathered sustenance while I went in search of wheel & tire cleaner and other necessities), paid our bill (just over $80), and made our way to the exit. Heading out of the store I had command of our shopping cart, as I do more often than not. After having walked past the salon, the manicure/pedicure shop, and a cavalcade of oddly positioned merchandise displays (we're not certain but it appears as though some sort of renovations are being done to this store) I navigated past the first set of sliding doors, on into the void between the store and the outside world, then finally I passed through the final set of sliding doors.

Before I go further, I feel as though a visual aide is in order.

What you see here is an image taken from Google Maps of the entrance/exit we were using that day at the Walmart in Orangeburg. There is nothing unique about it as this is an example of what you can expect to find if you were to look at a similar view of pretty much any Walmart. You can see the building, the cars, the parking lot, and most importantly the white painted (albeit faded) lines on the asphalt directly in front of the store. If you weren't aware, these lines denote a pedestrian crosswalk, a construct that is also made noticeable to oncoming motorists via accompanying signage (yes, this is one of the actual signs at the Walmart in question).

For guidelines regarding how the operator of a motor vehicle is to conduct themselves when they approach a pedestrian crosswalk, let us refer to section 56-5-3130 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, which states:

When traffic-control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to yield to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is upon the half of the roadway upon which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger.

I looked both ways as I exited the store that day to make sure there weren't any oncoming cars nearby. I saw one to my right but it appeared to be far enough away that I would be able to begin crossing the distance from the store to the parking lot as I, being a pedestrian, would've had the right of way. As I got about halfway between the store and the lot I noticed this car didn't appear to be slowing down - it wasn't going all that fast but it also wasn't showing signs of yielding.

I kept walking.

The car slowed a bit but was still coming towards me.

I kept walking. By this point I'm probably 75% of the way to my objective.

The car keeps coming - slowly, but it's still coming.

I'm about 85% of the way across the crosswalk. The front bumper of the car (a black Ford Focus sedan, similar to the one my wife owns oddly enough) is now so close to me that I had to angle our buggy out of its path else it would've struck the cart. I stop dead in my tracks then turn my head so that I'm looking directly at the driver of the car, a black woman wearing sunglasses (the kind that make the wearer's eyes look like that of a bulbous insect). She looked back at me, expressionless - we were in something of a duel at that moment, waiting to see who would make the next move. Suddenly her passenger, a black male, shouted at me through the open window on his side of the car, saying "You need to look around!" I began pushing our buggy out of harms way and as I was doing so I pointed at the ground then said back to the passenger "It's called a pedestrian crosswalk..." It was meaningless effort, but it made me feel a little better.

I know what some of you are probably thinking. "You idiot, that woman could've run you over and you just kept walking in the road!" Yes, that's entirely possible. I could have stopped at the moment I first noticed she wasn't going to slow down and let her pass. I didn't do that because I had decided there was a point to be made in standing my ground, however chauvinistic it may have been. I'm not the one who deserves to be chided for their behavior in this scenario because the driver of that car had decided, willfully and without provocation, that she had no problem with hitting another human being with her vehicle.

Why? I'm a 34-year old white guy. I'm speaking directly to the driver of that car here - would you have been so bold as to aim your car at me if I were a black guy of the same age? (Oh yeah, I'm going there.) Or perhaps if I were a little old black lady who was just out to pick up a gallon of milk and some bread? Do you still want to run me over or do you yield? Likewise, what if it had been my wife in my place or possibly a child? Are you still alright with potentially killing someone or does the race, age, gender, etc. of your potential victim have something to do with your decision?

Would it have been worth injuring me or damaging the buggy and our groceries to say "I belong here and you don't"? I don't think there's a personal injury lawyer in this state that wouldn't have been knocking at my hospital room door had she actually done harm to me. I can only assume she would've been fine with going to jail for that act. I don't know what kind of jail time a vehicular assault conviction carries but I'm sure it's not pleasant (or so I would hope). What would her defense have been, "He shouldn't have been walking where I was driving..."?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people like this woman exist. I think we encounter people of poor character every day, unfortunately, but they reveal themselves in varying degrees. Sometimes they might drop an empty soda can out the window of their car, then sometimes they might cheat on their husband with one of their co-workers. Sometimes they might eat a few grapes off the bunch they intend to buy while walking around a store, sometimes they might beat their son with a broom handle when he wets the bed. Sometimes they might take an extra newspaper from the box, sometimes they might bring a pistol into a crowded movie theater. My point being to say that we never know what evil exists inside of a person until it's let loose into the world and by then it's too late. You just have to hope you're not the one who winds up on the receiving end when the levy finally breaks.

A Rant About Taxes & Unexpected Bills

February is a month out of the year that people tend to enjoy, loathe or hate.

People who enjoy it are usually happily in love and able to celebrate the festivities that accompany Valentine's Day. Chocolates, flowers, and all the other commercialized nonsense associated with February 14, as it were. Conversely, people who hate it tend to be in the opposite scenario. Maybe they've had a bad break-up or gotten divorced and haven't yet been able to make peace and move on to whatever comes next for them. In the middle are those folks who just plain loathe the month of February which, at least this year, is where I find myself. Not for any kind of marital issues, mind you - rather issues of the sort that come from dealing with the Internal Revenue Service and hospitals/medical insurance providers.

My wife & I are pretty good at handling our personal finances. That's something I'm proud of seeing as how it seems like you hear of just as many, if not more, young couples splitting up as a result of stress over financial matters as you do matters of infidelity. We make more good decisions than we do bad ones, I would say, as neither of us are particularly prone to going off on spending sprees that would put us out of whack. We both have good jobs and we make sure our bills get paid; we sometimes have to juggle with more running chainsaws in the air than we'd like, but who doesn't these days?

Filing taxes has never been a particularly rosy endeavor for me. As far back as I can remember, it was always the case that I would wind up getting a little bit of money back from the state of South Carolina only to then have Uncle Sam turn around and say "Wait, I need that too, sorry - maybe next year?" (while snickering under his breath, no less). It was a frustrating cycle when I was single because I would see all these other folks out enjoying their suddenly bloated wallets, meanwhile I'm eating bologna sandwiches and drinking tap water.

Things have improved only somewhat since my wife & I have been married. If I remember correctly I believe we may have looked into the prospect of filing separately our first year of marriage. That idea got squashed quickly when it developed that I would've had to fork over a substantial amount of money to the IRS. Suffice to say that things got much better when we combined our information into a joint filing, but be that as it may I felt bad then and I have ever since because it seemed as though I (through no real fault of my own other than trying to earn a living, I guess) was damaging our potential for getting back a decent a return.

Since Jill and I have been married, we have always taken what we got back on our taxes and put it towards our annual trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We've been lucky in that we've gotten back enough to pay for the rental of the house we stay in; this year we were particularly fortunate in that we were able to handle that expense plus pay off the majority of what we had left over on the amount due for our next Walt Disney World adventure (which is coming up in May for the 2014 edition of Star Wars Weekends).

Those were monies which were returned to us by the state of South Carolina, for which I am thankful. We aren't getting any money back from the federal government, however. Nope, not one cent. As a matter of fact, we owe the Internal Revenue Service $190. Yes, you read that correctly - one hundred and ninety dollars.

When my wife informed me of that (yes, she does our taxes - because she's awesome, that's why), I couldn't help but laugh. $190? Really? I'm not begging for punishment here but what is $190 to the United States government? If you look at the nation's debt, we rack up roughly $50,000 PER SECOND in expenditures that, as a nation, we can't actually afford. How is our measly $190 going to help matters, given the state of things?

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we don't owe more. It just seems like a futile amount in the grand scheme of things, is all. That's not enough money to hire a decent plumber, for crying out loud. What are they going to do with it, pay the guy who shines some senator's shoes? That gives me a great idea, actually. I think every tax paying citizen of the United States should receive an itemized list of where every single penny of their taxes are spent. I think we deserve that level of transparency seeing as how they, on some level, apparently know about every phone call, email, text message, etc. that we generate.

Actually, I take that back. I don't want to know what they're doing with our money. It's bad enough that our government takes from us as much as it does, knowing how it's being spent might only make the situation that much more frustrating. "My money contributed to a study on whether or not cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior? (Yes, it happened.) Well isn't that lovely..."

Adding to this frustration is the fact that during the month of February I received an unexpected medical bill related to the sleep study I had done last year (click here to read about that experience, if you haven't already). This is on top of what I'm already paying the hospital in monthly intervals, mind you; from what I've been able to gather it's an adjusted sum that my insurance didn't cover. (Insurance being another deduction that gets sucked out of my paycheck which goes towards a service that rarely gets used then doesn't seem to help much when I need it.) Fortunately it wasn't an absurd amount of money (it's in the area of $60) but when you consider I had that procedure almost a year ago and I'm just now getting this bill, it left me wondering if there's not a statute of limitations on this kind of thing. Am I going to be 40 and get another bill related to this thing or what?

I hate to complain via my blog because I know people don't necessarily enjoy reading this kind of trite, but the simple fact of the matter is that this arena is one of the better opportunities I have to vent. Getting out your frustrations is healthy, and it's even better if you can do so in a constructive manner. (In my mind, it was either this or I go knock over a gas station; I think I chose wisely.) Trust me when I say that I would sooner write about a dozen different things than this - even so, this blog is about my life and February 2014 has been affected by these issues. It's one of those deals where you have to take the good with the bad, the uplifting moments with the frustrating ones, and try to look forward to whatever comes next. We shouldn't expect defeat, after all, because that only makes things worse.