Veteran's Day Paranoia at Walmart

We stopped into our local Walmart yesterday. Lynn had some light shopping to do. I browsed around as I like to do, people watching and meditating on junk that's for sale. When we first walked into the store we were greeted by an employee passing out red, white and blue cupcakes. I asked the employee if the cakes were free and he nodded that they were. Lynn encouraged me to take one so I chose one with red frosting.

Lynn went on her way. I consumed the cup cake and started looking for junk. I didn't have to look far. While finishing the cake, I noticed a display of what was called Sparkly poop and spit. The "poop" and "spit" was in a large container. Upon closer review, I began to realize that the "poop" and "spit" was intended to be poured into a sparkly big eyed doll and when the doll was full, if you pressed it either sparkly poop or sparkly spit came out of the doll.

I imagined the creative team that came up with the concept who figured that the doll would be more life-like if poop or spit was involved. Then hey, "how bout if we make the poop or the spit sparkly?" The idea must have been approved as a cutting edge concept. "Our doll shits and pukes but you don't know which will emerge each time it is squeezed." Just like life.

Next, I tried to imagine a guy being sent to the store to find some sparkly puke or shit for his kid's doll. The guy looking all over the place until finally locating the container, all of the time wondering "why do we need this shit?" and upon finding the sparkly crap realizing "jesus Christ, this puke is expensive."

My mediatation was interrupted when I witnessed two people being caught shoplifting.

I got out of the way and watched the two folks being led away. They were obviously boyfriend and girlfriend.  I thought to myself...those two folks must be shitting their pants right now and the guy looked like he might puke. None of that was going to be sparkly.

I wandered around for a few minutes until I saw a police woman enter the store. She smiled at me as she entered but she was not smiling a few minutes later when she confronted the two shop lifters. She took out her pad and started gathering information. She wasn't smiling at all but the shoplifters were kinda smiling, trying in vain to reduce the situation to a joke. The facade wasn't working. They were caught red handed.

Meanwhile Lynn returned. She asked me what I had been doing for the last 10 minutes. I told her that I was meditating on junk. 

She said "you're good at that."

I tried to explain about the sparkly poop and spit but didn't do a very good job as she was trying to find a cashier. It's hard to explain the concept of sparkly poop to someone who is not paying attention and has a more realistic agenda.

I followed her to the check out line. As we waited in line Lynn said "Ya know that cupcake was probably mean't for a veteran"

I imagined the cops coming over, spotting the smear of red frosting that I had on my sleeve and asking me if I had eaten a cupcake. How could I deny it? I would have been caught red sleeved.

"Are you a veteran?", they would ask. If I said "yeah" they might ask me for my veteran's identification card. I don't know if such a card exists so I probably would have just said no rather than  risking a complication of the situation with the charge of impersonating a veteran.

Upon saying that I wasn't a veteran, they would charge me with shoplifitng the cupcake and take me back to the office where the policewoman, no longer smiling would arrest me and send me to jail.

Lynn went to the self-checkout which had all kinds of trouble interpreting the handful of coupons that Lynn had collected which had led us to the Walmart in the first place. After a short delay, we gathered up our goods and headed for the exit.

I pointed out the display of sparkly poop and/or spit to Lynn in an attempt to prove that I wasn't making the whole thing up.

She could care less.

As we left the store, we passed the police woman who had been replaced by two other cops. Once again, our eyes met and once again she smiled.