Next Thing You Know, Val's Picture Will Be Hanging in the Dead-Mouse-Smelling Post Office

When we last convened, I was having no issue returning an unfitting mattress pad for cash at the Walmart Disservice Center.

So...shed of my crackly faulty unused mattress pad, I turned that cart on two wheels and headed back to the bedding section. That's what everybody does, right, after buying three different crackly faulty mattress pads? Goes directly to that aisle and buys another one?

That $20.53 was virtually burning a hole in my pocket. Must. Buy. Another. Mattress. Pad. I parked my walker/cart beside the shelves. The mattress pads were on a long aisle going across the store. To catch your attention, I suppose. They morphed into quilts and fleece blankets and thirsty towels. The humdrum sheets and comforters and pillow cases ran down shorter aisles, from front to back. Yes. These mattress pads were the bait. The carrot in that wooden box propped up by a stick.

I found Quiet Comfort, which I believe is the Walmart brand, as it was the cheapest and the first three choices of Hick. Then there was Simmons Beautyrest. But I chose the third option. The mid-price just-right Goldilocks version, Serta. Sure, it was two-and-a-half times the price of my refund. But sometimes, you actually get what you pay for. It's still hermetically sealed in its airtight zippered clear-plastic cube. Unlike a certain date of Elaine Benes, we're afraid to take it out. I really hope nobody bought this one and took it home to see if it would fit on their bed, then shoved it back in the plastic and returned it! That would just be wrong. But that's not the story!

As I stood plopping one mattress pad pod after the other onto the child seat area of my cart/walker, unzipping them and fingering the fill and the stretchy fitted part...a "janitor" swept by me. Yes. A little dude with a short push broom. I think he was wearing a flannel shirt, and he might have also had on a blue Walmart vest. I would be a terrible crime witness. I did perceive him as shorter than me, and because of that, I could see that his sandy man-mullet was thinning on top. He came right up behind me, from the main front-to-back aisle that separates the hardware section from housewares. Yes. I had come that way myself, from the pharmacy where I picked up toothpaste and face soap for Genius. This guy could have been a bloodhound on my trail. Or McGruff sans raincoat.

Sweeper came right up to my heels, then veered off at a right angle down the king/queen sheet sets. I had made my decision by now, and hmpfed at his audacity to get right up on me before turning. I can get that on the backroads of Backroads anyday. Off I went, straight down my aisle, to the center of the store. I zigged a couple aisles toward the back, then zagged back across to Men's Wear. Pony needs a new pair of pants. He doesn't so much need them as wants them, in an unspoken manner, pants with a watch pocket to encase his new pocket watches. The Pony is not a fan of jeans, preferring cargo pants with loose legs and large pockets. But he'll make an exception for his precious Christmas watches.

There I was, perusing straight legs, boot cuts, and carpenters for acceptable Ponywear. I'll be ding dang donged if Sweeper didn't appear out of thin air and cut down the Dickies aisle behind my jeans table! What a coincidence that was! Almost as if he had followed my exact path. In no way did he have time to sweep up and down all those aisles in between.

I tossed a pair of carpenters into the cart, and headed on across the store to find Little Debbie. Genius is home, and there's a shortage. I had to veer two aisles up toward the front of the store. Little Debbie dwells across from the first freezer case. I imagine her people are also frozen pizza people. Wouldn't you know it, I had left my glasses at home. After that whole month of being without them, they're a second thought. I bent down to grab a box of Cosmics. Drat! It was a regular box. Not the large economy size. A regular box would not last two days around this Genius-ridden abode.

I put it back, and moved my walker/cart a few feet along, still squinting. A rough-looking lady was standing back, most likely having the opposite vision issue as mine, needing to press her back up against the glass freezer doors in order to see. "Are you looking for the big box? Because I saw you put back the regular one. And right down there on the very end, beside it, is the big box." She bent over and snagged it for me. A regular person-helping person.

"Thank you so much! That's just what I was looking for. I don't have my glasses." I put Little Debbie in my cart/walker, and was just about to wheel around and head to the deli for a big Ranch Cobb Salad, when I slammed on my walker/cart brakes.

SWEEPER WAS RIGHT THERE, GOING ACROSS THE AISLE BETWEEN ME AND THE FREEZER!

That, my friends, is no coincidence. I was being mattress-pad profiled! Seriously. Are the surveillance cameras not good enough? Does security doubt that any employee (and I'm including Granny and Grampy Greeter) would be able to catch me totin' my purloined mattress pad out of the store? Have you ever seen a Walmart janitor? Not me. Not unless they call for a cleanup on a specific aisle. Really? A janitor taking the exact same path through the ten-acre store as Val, at 11:30 on a Monday morning? I don't think so.


I really think Sweeper could have better spent his time following the Grandpa/Grandson Played-Gamers, or the Fairy Barbie Frauds.

Let me steal a bit from Uncle Kracker:

I don't know how you found me
I don't know why
I really wish you'd turn around and say goodbye
All I know is when you're with me
I just ain't free
Who told you to push that broom and follow me?

Follow me? That's against my rights
I'm lookin' for a mattress pad to sleep at night
If a fake-return thief is what you're hopin' to find
I'm not the one who's going to steal you blind.