I had one of the weirdest experiences in my life at a local Walmart recently.
I was moving through the store purchasing things from all over the
place. I was pushing my cart and doing my thing. I was being a good
consumer.
I'm 58 years old at this point. I move will and feel like I am
physically fit. And I don't feel like I appeared to be an aged
person.
I made it to the bread and coffee and tea file. There is peanut
butter and jelly on one end, a lot of curio egg instant coffee things
at the other end. And on the other side a lot of bread and tortillas.
I made the mistake of parking my cart on one side of the aisle while
reaching for a package of tortillas on the other side of the aisle.
When I started by motion there was nobody on the aisle with me.
As I reached to select some tortillas from the stack of extra-large
carb friendly protein rich tortilla packages on the other side of the
aisle I heard the telltale sound of another card approaching me.
From my peripheral vision I picked up a massive person pushing a
normal sized cart and bearing down on my current location.
As this person approached my current location I looked up and saw the
fierce look on the face of a female with her hair pulled tightly up to
the top of her head in a bun with a man in tow behind her looking
pleadingly at me. She was bearing down on me as if I was a possum in
the road blinded by headlights at 2:00am in the morning.
I grabbed for a package of tortillas and then stepped back across the
aisle behind my cart for some protection. Foolish, because the cart
was on the other side of me and she would've hit me anyways. As my
snatch at tortillas happened I pulled the perforated plastic off of a
package of tortillas but left the package there on the shelf.
This woman bore down on my position and then blew through where I had
just been standing one second ago as if I did not exist or as if I was
a squirrel or possum on the road.
"Bitch" was my first thought. My second thought was pity. My third
thought was racism, sadly.
Common decency says you pause and wait for people, especially the aged
like me. She apparently had no intention to do that. I must not
appear aged enough for her to have any pity on me. Or maybe it was
the color of my skin or the color of her skin and the experience she
has had over life.
All in all it was an interesting but valuable lesson. Don't try to
buy across the aisle at Walmart. You'll get run down no matter where
you are or who you happen to be.
Lesson learned!
