MANNERS AT WALMART

I have never thought of Walmart as a center of socially acceptable mannerisms.

But I realized this morning that there are certain 'acceptable' ways of acting, even in a perhaps lower-level of civilization such as Walmart.

My husband and I went before our weekly breakfast-out for a few necessary items, and hit Walmart in its first-of-the-month-payday splendor - crowded, noisy, busy and unsupervised.

And my dear husband kept DOING things, things which are AGAINST the natural order of shopping.

He kept leaving his cart in the middle of the aisle, without enough room for people to move around, and would walk over to a completely different aisle.

Abandoning it, and effectively blocking the aisle.

He would walk across open spaces without looking around for other customers - much like merging without yielding to traffic already there,

He would stop to look at something, and not even register the line of people behind waiting not-so-patiently for him to move.

I was getting more and more irritated at him before it really registered what I was miffed about.

And it made me stop and think - are these 'traditions' anything worthy of blindly conforming to?

I know that because he abandoned his cart in an inappropriate stop, I found out that WalMart does carry body-pillows (on a low shelf not anywhere near the regular pillows).

I got to exchange a lot of "well isn't this exasperating" looks with complete strangers.

And I suddenly recollected living in the 60's, when we were trying to be the 'new' generation, trying to shake up the status-quo, rebel against the 'old' standards.

What happened to us old hippies, who can't even approach WalMart as a new experience?

Why can't we experience WalMart as a unique and out of the ordinary occurrence? What is wrong with breaking up the nor mal (stale) order of things to look for things (body pillows) in a new and different way (and actually discover something in the process)? 

Next time I go to WalMart, I'm going to wear psychedelic colors and flowers in my hair - I'm going to go UP and the DOWN aisles and DOWN all the UP aisles - I am going to walk through in the opposite direction that I normally do - I'm going to sing old Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan songs outloud.

It may be the only way to experience WalMart, anyway,

BEING A GENTLEMAN

I am openly... conflicted.

There. At least I admit it.

I grew up in the 60's and 70's - the whole woman's lib, going bra-less (yeah, I used to be able to get away with it, can you believe it?), wearing jeans, equal jobs, equal pay...

Well, we are still working on the last two, right?

But I was a feminist.

I wouldn't let guys open doors for me - I would ask them to dance rather than wait to be asked (which, at least at high school dances, guaranteed a lot of time dancing) - I at least three times got hired for jobs that were supposed to be 'male' jobs (and had to go through a whole lot of convincing, all three times).

I had to re-train my husband when we first began dating; he had been taught that the girl/woman should wait in the car until the guy came around to open the car door for her.

Yeah, that happened. Once.

I have no problem with politeness - my sole objection was being treated in a different manner because I was female.

Now, fast forward about 35 years.

I am at that age where I am not quite ready to be given a senior discount... but I'll ask for one. I'm proud to be a grandmother... but I secretly enjoy it when people say, "No! You're not old enough to be a grandmother!" and all those polite expressions that are used.

And I admit that I enjoy being, well, mistaken for a MATURE individual - someone who has had experience. I have enough gray hairs that I can b.s. my way through a WHOLE lot of stuff.

So when a man opens a door for me NOW, I now take it as a sign of RESPECT, not sexism rearing its ugly head.

And, I must admit, that when I have 1,050 lbs. of hay to unload from my pickup and into a hay shed...

I would like a man to at least OFFER to help.