What surprised me as I stood in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina, was not so much that I was standing in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina. The exigencies of a Blankie left far behind at school can leave one in some pretty surprising places. What surprised me was that I didn’t really, that much, mind being in a Wal-Mart in Hickory, North Carolina.
I don’t mean to offend regular Wal-Mart-goers. Nor am I unaware of the PR campaign they have undertaken, in which, I am told, workers are actually being offered full-time hours and benefits. It’s just that I object to the whole concept of bigger and cheaper marketing and sell-me-more-junk-in-one-place. At least Target gives loads of money to local schools and sponsored the Minerva Awards at the California Women’s Conference I attended in 2006, giving a good chunk of money to some pretty impressive organizations, like the first women’s shelter in California. Reminding myself of these things makes me feel justified in wandering the aisles of Target looking for, yes, bigger and cheaper and more junk to buy.
As for the Wal-Mart in which I found myself, I was nothing short of grateful for its presence. We were 45 minutes into a two-hour drive with a child who, despite my request, had been allowed to take a nap at school, awakening just in time to be strapped into a car seat for two hours. “He only slept an hour!” the apologetic teacher told me, invoking nightmare images of a cranky, tired child who would not, on principle, consider a second nap, no matter how long the car trip.
So, when Jake started bellowing, “Bubby! Bubby!” at the top of his lungs and I uttered in a voice dripping with panic, “I left Bubby at school!” Mike sped for the next exit in the throes of self-preservation. And there, over a rise in the scrubby landscape of gas stations and bad Chinese restaurants, we discovered WalMart and the oversized Bubby I christened “Bubba.” (”‘Tuck! ‘Tuck!” Jake cries whenever the extra weight of all that superfluous fabric stymies his attempts to cradle the entire Bubba in his arms as he is accustomed to do with the two smaller, finer Bubbies we managed to leave behind in Asheville that day).
My boy sated with his swath of soft polyester, Mike filling the gas tank I had neglected prior to starting on our trip, I reflected on why I felt perfectly okay with my trip to Wal-Mart. The people had been friendly; Mike had traced an unerring path to the baby blankets, avoiding the horrors of powdered soft drinks made of high fructose corn syrup, chemicals, and advertising; and Bubba was sort of reasonably priced. Fifteen dollars, after all, is a small price to pay for peace and an appeased toddler.
But really, I thought, as I stared back at the legions of cars stacked in the Wal-Mart parking lot, I felt okay being in Wal-Mart because I was feeling so okay being where I am in this world. I could venture outside my usual comfort zone because I have so firmly removed myself from the old zone that provoked comfort-anxieties in the first place.
