You know those self-absorbed kids who go on about ‘microaggressions’ and ‘triggers’ and ‘safe spaces,’ that we all so enjoy laughing at? Some days I’m no better.
I’ve never enjoyed crowds of people. Not ever. All the time I lived in the city, which is most of my life, I was a nervous wreck most of the time. Volatile and impatient and generally a little dangerous to be near, I was much of the time one frustration away from blowing up and making a public ass of myself. Sometimes I’d have anxiety attacks that would leave me sweating and hyperventilating and really genuinely hurrying back to my ‘safe space,’ wherever that may be. What brought these episodes on was generally…nothing, to be honest. Nothing that would upset you, or any regular person. I just figured – and still do, really – that I’m an asshole.
I’ve said it so often it’s a boring cliché – Nobody becomes a hermit in the desert because of his great people skills. But after nearly a decade in the desert – it’ll be ten years the first week in November – mostly spent completely alone, I’m a much calmer person now. Most of my neighbors actually like me, and I like to think I’ve given them reason to.
I don’t like going to the big town about 50 miles away, though of course it’s been a regular thing for the past few years since my eye troubles got diagnosed. Mostly I take it in stride, some trips less than others. This was not one of my better ones.
I was fine until I was done with the ophthalmologist and trying to pay up and get out. Paying out money makes me anxious – duh. For the past several months I’ve been relatively flush, but that’s coming to an end and this morning was always destined to take a major bite out of my remaining money. Then the lady at the desk took her sweet time getting me paid up and out of there, and people kept walking up behind me, which I am no longer used to at all, and I wanted to press my back against a wall and that’s never a good sign. Especially when there isn’t a wall. Most especially since the next stop is Wal-fergodsake-Mart.
It’s Thursday! Why would Wal-Mart be wall-to-wall people on Thursday afternoon? Thank heaven I got my prescriptions out of the way while I could still manage a halfway-sincere smile at the nice counter lady who hadn’t done me any harm.
Didn’t help that this new prescription, which unlike the old one is actually having a positive effect on my IOP, costs five times as much. I should have just stopped there, really. I know the signs, and this was going to be a bad day. But I don’t get to a big town very often, and I keep a running shopping list for when I do. So I tried working down my list, consciously keeping a hand on my temper, smiling and murmuring non-murderous things when people backed into me or flew around corners into me or lined up like 500-pound defensive linesmen and walked along at 1/2 yard per hour. I actually made a dent in the shopping list, fortunately nothing that required refrigeration, and headed to the checkout before I started gibbering.
A word about Wal-Mart self-checkout machines: I can’t ever get through one without it having some sort of a breakdown and/or refusing to proceed without somebody bailing me out. So I stood in a checkout line behind two people with packed carts. And then I just stood there, for a subjective month. Up ahead, the checkout lady was doing something, I don’t know what, that did not involve taking money from customers and getting them the hell out of the store.
And here’s the weird thing…
Nobody seemed to think there was anything wrong here.
Nobody seemed to notice
That nothing
Of anything resembling progress
Was happening.
The Line
Wasn’t
Moving.
And if anyone present but me cared about that, they were successfully keeping it to themselves.
Maybe I had slipped into some sort of fugue state where time seemed to move faster for me than for everyone else. I genuinely don’t know. You know how your father used to bonk you on the head and jeer, “You’re all right, the world’s all wrong?” At the moment that seemed a reasonable explanation.
I looked at the contents of my shopping cart, every item of which I’d been living without quite comfortably up till then. In fact I questioned the wisdom of even spending more money at that point.
So I carefully backed my cart out of the line, abandoned it in Ladies’ Lingerie, grabbed my prescriptions and raced for the door. “Thank you, come again,” intoned a seated person with a cane and a smile I believe had been painted on his face, no doubt for the ten thousandth time since the beginning of his shift.
I went outside, it was muggy, the sky was nearly black. It had been raining when I came in and it was going to rain again soon beyond doubt. I flung my back dramatically against the rough block wall and all but threw my arm against my forehead with a self-pitying sigh. If I’d had a fainting couch handy I’d have thrown myself onto it. I was really acting like one of those kids I love to mock. A few years ago a doctor told me I had the pulse rate and blood pressure of a serial killer, and I think it was meant as a compliment. He wouldn’t say that if he could see me now.
Shall I tell you, while I’m playing True Confessions, something else that has always made me unreasoningly anxious? The sight – or even the thought, sometimes – of a grown adult acting like a child. I don’t mean the way I was acting at the moment – I mean like an infant. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own misery I’d have looked around and perhaps taken a warning from the sight of that short bus parked so close to the entrance. Then I wouldn’t have been surprised when the door opened and out came a procession of wheelchairs containing profoundly brain-damaged unfortunates and being pushed by their helpers, unaccountably taking a day trip to Wal-Mart.
Seriously, I need to know. Why would you take them to Wal-Mart? Where is the therapeutic value in that?
Yes, I know I’m an asshole. I’ve already conceded that I’m an asshole. Normally, I swear, I’d have held the door for them and smiled. Now I was just further weirded out. What next will come, I wondered, since the universe seems to be ticking down the Big List of Wonderful Ways to Freak Joel Out? Clowns? Clowns with chainsaws, maybe?
I am living refutation of that stupid notion that guns cause violence.
I hung around the truck until D&L got back, climbed into the back and refused to move until we got back to their place. I still hadn’t settled down: When I drove the Jeep to Landlady’s to get Ghost and Little Bear out of Gitmo, I realized I was hyperventilating.
Now I’ve been home in my safe space for two hours, the last hour of which I spent writing this whining post. I do regret that bottle of tequila I left in Ladies’ Lingerie. But I’ll be more sanguine about it tomorrow morning.
The weirdest, and maybe the most humiliating thing about the incident is how familiar it felt. Jeez, people, I used to practically go through life that way. No wonder I didn’t have any frickin’ friends.
Who knew? That same short bus comes to my Wall-mart!
Only it’s full of old people, really old people with walkers who have to be helped individually off the bus. And then there aren’t enough electric carts to go around, which is probably a good thing for the rest of us shoppers.
And yes, we have those same glacially slow checkout clerks.
Hell Joel, you might be an asshole, but you’re my kinda asshole. Great minds, and all that, ya know?
3 AM, best time to go. It’s a freak show, but at least it’s a less densely populated freak show. You escaped from San Diego, but I’m still stuck here for a while. Getting worse and worse, week by week.
That is a normal day at the eternal freak show called Walmart in the down economic cities of AZ. It might not be consolation but it is worse at the inner-city Walmarts. I don’t do people and hate crowds of people. Have to be around both to make a living. By Friday I will be in melt down mode and need the weekend to reboot. The short-bus is here too and also makes the rounds of Safeway and Fry’s. For some reason they stay away from Food City.
I’m the same way at any of the big box stores. I hate the crowds and there have been a few times when, after receiving poor service, I have abandoned my stuff and left so don’t feel too bad. BTW it could have been worse, you didn’t shoot anyone…
A friend and I take turns holding the gun on each other to force one of us to go into Walmart. The problem is that the one with the gun has to go into Walmart voluntarily for it to work….
Almost certainly won’t work in your location, but thank doG for the internet, UPS and FedEx.
Me thinks ya may want to watch the calender. The 4th falls Monday so all government offices close Friday for an extended weekend. THAT means that ALL welfare/work fare checks come out early and that means wally world is gonna get all the scrum from the bottom of the barrel.
Don’t feel bad, I am right there with you and the only thing that holds me in check, most days, is memories of growing up and advice from the parent figure. If it weren’t for Dad, there would be a trail of bodies over the last 35 years (when I bought my first real gun )
In my experience, the best time to shop *anywhere* is early Sunday mornings. This might preclude purchasing alcohol, depending on local ordinances, but there tend to be fewer shoppers in the wee hours that day than at any other time. Normal caveats about holidays apply of course.
I’ve only gone to WalMart twice in the last five years, but ours aren’t usually crowded and the people generally look pretty human… 🙂 I hate crowds seriously too and can’t stand to have people get too close, so one time stands out. Of course, it’s 90 miles one way for me to go to the city anyway, so I’m not tempted much.
Anyway, this one time I happened to be in the city for something unavoidable and decided to go to WalMart. I should have been alerted by the very full parking lot, but usually park in a remote location anyway, just for the exercise. When I got into the building, however, it was packed. Come to find out that the 10th of the month is when all of the residents of the two nearby Indian reservations get their welfare checks and food stamps… The shelves in the food department were almost empty! It was a preview of the first day of SHTF, I think.
I abandoned my cart in front of the meat department, nothing in it, and someone grabbed it almost as soon as I’d let go of it! I was freaked and quickly made my exit. The amazing part is that nobody at all seemed to even notice my OC sidearm, and certainly nobody cared. I think they were all concentrating on emptying the shelves. Aside from the checkstands, I saw zero WM employees! I do wonder where they were hiding. LOL
I’ll never, ever go back to the WalMart there on the 10th… and the last two trips were really no more comfortable, just not quite as freaky. So you are not alone in this, Joel. I was sweating like a race horse by the time I got to my car, and never gladder to see the Wyoming state line a little after that. 🙂
I gotta disagree with your first sentence. I’m sure that somewhere there exists the mythical perfectly adjusted human being, but I’ve yet to meet them. Everyone has their own foibles.
The question becomes, when you are “triggered” do you (A) recognize what’s going on and take steps to ameliorate the situation, up to and including removing yourself, or (B) piss and moan about how everyone else in the universe needs to bend over backwards to accommodate your eccentricities?
People aren’t contemptuous of those self-absorbed kids for getting triggered. They are contemptuous of them for being whiny little wusses about it.
Sounds like a typical trip to WallyWorld. I’ve waited in a long line at 2:00 in the Ay-Emm on a Tuesday morning. The one closest to me is *always* crowded, and no more than three cashiers are working at any given time,regardless of the number of cash registers. I kinda like the self-checkout lane. I’ve never had any problem with it.
I once got my foot ran over while in WallyWorld. A huge woman in one of those electric asscarts ran over it,and said something sarcastic. I did too, in return. I wasn’t hurt, just startled.It was past one in the morning,and I was about half asleep or it wouldn’t have happened.
Ah, heck, Joel, you might be a bit further along the curve, but you’re hardly alone in this. I hate crowds. I don’t understand why people need to walk down the grocery aisle beside their cart, blocking the whole thing. In places such as retail outlets, I quickly tire of those aimlessly propelling themselves along. I too have suddenly decided to abandon whatever errand it was that found me inside one of those places. And I try to go shopping at times when I think it won’t be very crowded. Usually, just getting outside makes me feel all better though.
Too bad about the Tequila.
Actually 3 AM is a BAD time to hit WalMart, unless you want to deal with all the drunks and druggies. If you want a relatively peaceful time, shoot for anywhere between 6 AM and 11 AM. The freaks have gone home for the “night” by then, and the rest of the crowd hasn’t gotten out of bed yet.
Unfortunately, the cashier count is also lowest at those times, but they usually seem to have at least ONE person in the self-checkout corral, and if you’re the only one using that service, they will probably be glad to assist you fairly quickly. You do get all kinds as WalMart employees, but they do try to keep the good ones as best they can.
Joel, try going at the beginning of the fourth week of the month. Most of the EBT/food stamp people have blow through their money and are waiting till the first of the month for their cards to be reloaded. Also, early morning is better, but not too early. From 6-9 AM it seems the night people have gone to bed and the do nothing crack of nooners are not up yet. I know how you feel brother!
Kristen used to work at a Mall-Wart a few years ago. She had no license, so she had to get a ride, & I picked her up at night. Kept her from carrying the SP101, & a good thing. Several times she got into the truck almost purple. She’d have killed somebody if she’d been armed. I’m kinda surprised she didn’t do the job manually.
Hmm. I’m usually the guy that makes the rest of the crowd anxious.
I was just there buying birdshot and .177 pellets on Friday.