Merry #$%*8#* Christmas

Posted 12-10-2023

Happy Holidays: This is the time of year where everyone I meet is
either really happy and full of the holiday spirit, or really
miserable and waiting for the season to be over. It is a real eye
opener to take a trip to the local Walmart.

I had to make a trip to the post office the other day, Friday, with
my mother. This is the way mom does things; We’re drinking coffee,
watching the morning news, I’m going through all of my overnight
emails and posting/printing what I need, Mom stands up and says,
“Well, we better get going.”

“Um…” I say.

Mom just looks at me like I’m an idiot. I’m pretty sure that I am
part idiot, on my father’s side, of course, but I don’t like
acknowledging it.

“Uh,” I try.

“Well,” Mom says as she turns away and heads for the coat rack
with her purse. “If we’re going to the post office we better get
going.”

Two things here: When Mom picks up her purse, she’s going somewhere.
Two; she never tells me before hand, although she believes she does,
or, more disturbing to me, I believe she doesn’t.

“Well. You have to mail that thing to your brother, and I have to
get stamps,” Mom says. She actually stops and turns around to look
at me.

The thing to my brother is not even packaged yet. It isn’t packaged
yet because she told me to wait as she had packages to send with it.
“Uh, I thought you said to wait?”

“We did.”

I looked down at my laptop and the emails. Obviously, I wasn’t going
to be reading that stuff right now. I got up and got the thing boxed
up as quick as I could, went back on-line for a few moments and
printed a shipping label, grabbed two other packages that needed to
go, and headed for the door…

The post office was no big deal. You might ask what this has to do
with Jolly Moods and Walmart. Well, after we left the Post Office,
Mom announced that she needed to make a quick trip to Walmart.

There is no such thing as a quick trip to Walmart. Not with Mom. And,
I don’t even need to say it, and if I did it would make no
difference, I thought we were only going to the post office!

First there was parking, at Walmart, on a Friday. The parking lot was
jam packed with jolly shoppers shaking fists and dropping F bombs all
over the place.

“Don’t listen, Mom,“ I told her.

“If that $#@& thinks he’s taking that $#%@*&# spot, he’s
got another think coming,” Mom said as she accelerated and swung
into a just vacated spot.

“Uh,” I said. The guy in the truck she had slammed the parking
door on blew his horn. “Hey!” I said. I waved one hand, was
tempted to pop up one finger and didn’t. I just smiled and waved like
we were best friends or something.

“?$#@%^,” Mom said. She opened the door and leaned out but the
guy looked away and then drove off. Frightened away by a little old
lady.

The store was a treat. I have agreed to always be on my best behavior
in Walmart… The supermarket… Sears… Well, pretty much
everywhere I don’t want to be. But, that is not an easy task,
especially at this time of year with all the happy couples and
shoppers, or Halloween with all the kids, or Valentines day with all
the In Love people. Mom just throws her purse into one of
those electric carts and she’s gone. Pity the fool that steps in front
of her.

A year or so ago I went with my aunt and my mom to the same store. My
aunt recently passed, but that day she was heading for the produce
aisle, and you can believe she got there fast. Never mind the little
kid she almost ran down or the man she actually drove into, and that
was just inside the doorway. I looked for mom, but she was gone
already. Off to the other end of the store no less.

I opened my mouth that day and these words fell out: “Um… Do you
need help?”

“Yes,” she said. What fun that had been,
but I truly believe I saved a few lives that day.

Since then, I have learned not to
hang around. Make sure all the small children are out of the way and
then head in another direction. And don’t look back unless there is
screaming… Loud
screaming…

So, Friday, mom twisted the throttle and rocketed away. She
sideswiped a pallet of Christmas stuff, an old man with a cane
watched her carefully, I was sure he intended to club her if she got
too close, but they passed each other with nothing but dirty looks.

Meanwhile I’m standing in the aisle watching. On Friday… With
Christmas shoppers everywhere.

“What the #$@%!” A jolly shopper said as he went around me,
glaring at me.

“Oh, Ed,” his wife said. “Don’t be so…” He dragged her
away.

“Excuse me,” I said. I turned and nearly walked into a mother and
her forty-two children she was dragging through the store.

“Eeeek,” she said. Or, it sounded like Eeeek to me. I turned back
around and one of her kids darted around me and stuck his tongue out
as he went.

“Make yer #$%^@#$ mind up,” a young guy said as he darted to the
right and shot around me. His girlfriend, wife, obviously in love
with him, shot me a pitying look as he dragged her by me.

“And a Merry #$%@^&% Christmas to you too,” I muttered. I
spied a partly empty aisle and slipped into it. Why was the aisle
pretty much deserted? Feminine hygiene products. And, no, I don’t own
a vagina of my own.

Apparently, they don’t have any holiday editions of those things, and
I cannot imagine they are very often given as gifts…

“You know, Bob. I was thinking of getting Alice one of those
fancy whatchamacallits in the feminine hygiene aisle for Christmas.”

“Fred, Alice will kill you.”

“But, they’re supposed to be…”

“She’ll kill you, Fred. Kill
you.”

Hence the aisle was empty. I glanced around briefly, some old guy
passing the mouth of the aisle shot me a look that said he was
shocked I was in that aisle, like I was doing something bad. That
reminded me, as I looked around once more, that there was nothing
there for me. I did not possess the necessary equipment to be in that
aisle, so I left.

I made my way through the merry crowd of shoppers, happy couples and
wild children, picked up a few more swear word combinations that even
I hadn’t known, and found the home office section.

The home office section, the electronics section and the automotive
section are pretty much my go to places. I can always find something
there to look at and usually buy too. Of course, it’s Christmas
shopping mania time, so you really can’t stop to look, you sort of
have to look far ahead, judge the crowd speed, and then snatch up
what you wanted as you pass it by. Don’t get it on the first go
around? Tough $%#@. Get back in line and try again.

I left there with my padded mailers I had needed and headed for the
grocery part of the store. 6000 shoppers looking for food. All
holiday happy. Sure.

It was easy to find Mom, I just
looked for ripples in the crowd, and listened for the occasional
scream or shout. It led me right to her.

As a man, here is how I shopped when I was single: Wait for payday…
(Why is it I made just as much money single as I did married, yet
when I was single I was always broke waiting for payday?) So, while
waiting for payday, I wrote down all the things I needed. I mean an
exhaustive list. Should I pick up some feminine hygiene products in
case a female friend comes over and needs them? Better, just to be
safe. Cereal? Meat? I made nice lists. Meanwhile, I never ate at
home. I stopped at fast food places all of the time because I was
young enough to eat whatever I wished and get away with it. About
the time payday came around I realized that and took another look at
my lists:

Mustard? Absolutely. What else can you put on a Bologna sandwich?

Tampons? Did I really write that down? Cereal? What?

Uh… Oh yeah, Bologna… And Beer… and bread, the other loaf from
two months ago is moldy

That was it. So, I would go to the store, directly to the three places
I needed to go, and in under a minute I was at the checkout, elbowing
a little old lady out of the way, ready to go. Not so with Mom. Mom
has to make the entire circuit. Not only did she not tell me when we
left home that we would also be going to Walmart after the post
office, but now that we’re there she has jumped right into the spend,
spend, spend Holiday attitude, no doubt bought on by all the cussing.

Do we have to go to every aisle? Yes. We do.

I trailed along listening to bitching and griping from all the other
men and women that also didn’t want to be there.

“Listen, Barb. I don’t give a $#$% if we have a %^$%$#@ Turkey or a
%$^&# Ham…”

“No… I didn’t run over your foot… Yeah? Well %^$# you and your
old lady too.”

“What did you say?”

A nearby mother grabs her kid and
protectively drags him away. “Mommy, Mommy, I think that
one guy is gonna $%#@ up that other guy… Mommy … Mommy…”

Mom just drove right through the middle of them.

“Sorry,” I said as I followed behind Mom. I’ll tell you the
truth, it defused the argument, and that was probably good news for
the one guy as the other guys wife looked like she could have kicked
his @#$ in a minute, and was about to. We finished Moms circuit,
purchased six hundred things we really didn’t need, and headed for
home.

Back home, I wondered over all of that holiday cheer. So much love
from the couples and family members I saw in the store. The holidays
in general. Am I missing the closeness and togetherness of being
married? Being in a relationship? Is the holiday season better for
those folks? Then I remembered just how it was in those relationships
I had, and that every one of them ended, was over. And that there was
a reason for that. Are you #$%^&$@ crazy? I asked myself.

Probably, I agreed.

No. Going to Walmart just reminded me that some married folks are
just looking for opportunities to kill each other, or anyone else.
They are miserable and the holidays only make it worse. Hey, when you
are single you only get lonely. And, you don’t have to go to
Walmart! … Unless your mom tricks you into it… I don’t think I’m
going to Walmart for a while…

One last word on ex-wives: A person actually said this to me the
other day.

“Oh yeah. I’m friends with my ex, aren’t you?”

“Um, no… None of them,” I said.

“Huh. My ex likes me.”

“Yeah… Mine doesn’t.” The uncomfortable silence fell right
about then. “So… what about those Jolly %#@&*^$ shoppers at
Walmart,” I asked?

“Oh… Those $#@^@&%,” he said.

Okay. That was my week. I hope you are all having a great holiday. I
did my shopping online. Lazy, I know. We got about 12” of snow here
Thursday evening, and we’re supposed to get 14” or more tonight.
This past Fall I had a chance to buy a snow blower cheap. I cannot
tell you what stupid argument I used to talk myself out of it. Oh
well. I’ll be back next week.

Hey check out this new book by Sam Wolfe: The Bone Clan…

The Bone Clan

The battle lasted for hours, leaving behind a trail of blood and
destruction. When it was finally over, only a handful of warriors
remained standing. Deh gave the command to abandon their territory,
fighting the attackers off while the women and the children were
spirited away. #Prehistoric #CaveMen #eBooks #Apple
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-bone-clan/id6473810386