1. i make a list. (a list on my blog?! NO.)
2. IT'S MY BLOG EVERYDAY IN JUNE GO! CHALLENGE! YEEEAH BUDDY.
3. it's two days until i turn that magical age where i can consume adult beverages.
4. my lovely boyfriend is here for the weekend to celebrate.
you obviously knew all of these things going in. obviously.
so there's my mandatory list for this post. i have no idea when those became mandatory. i just realized one day that hey, i really liked to write lists, and it felt easier to describe things in lists rather than writing long, boring paragraphs and scaring you all away. i hope that my lists aren't scary.
so. this post. it's about wal-mart.
during my english reading writing and research class this past semester, we discussed feminist theory. we didn't go into detail about how to approach literature with it, but we talked a lot about feminism. and of course, dr. aspinall, with his pink pants and intense shakespeare knowledge, was a hipster feminist. meaning that he was a feminist before it was cool. somehow, after reading this very interesting poem about dead poets wandering around a brightly lit grocery store that i pictured as meijer, we talked about consumerism.
i'd never liked walmart. after we discussed consumerism and feminism and all kinds of fun stuff for an hour and a half, i decided that i would never go to wal-mart to buy anything. ever again.
i also promised myself i'd never drink alcohol, but i have a bottle of wine waiting for me in the fridge for sunday, so that worked out well.
this really starts out with me moving out of my dorm room. as a resident assistant, i had a double all to myself, and as a resident assistant that joined a sorority, my room was full of STUFF. i spent five days moving out, and the last day i spent a good five hours just hauling stuff to my car and shoving the rest in a storage closet, because i get free storage for living in indiana and going to school in michigan.
i could not continue packing my room before i addressed the issue of my extra bookshelf, which was holding up half of my bunk bed. it was filled with signs of one of my addictions: empty dr. pepper cans.
in the fair state of michigan, one can return cans and get ten cents back. this is not true on indiana. how is this fair?
in michigan, you pay that ten cents when you buy the can. not in indiana. here in my fair state, we just have a big recycling bin and we throw everything recyclable (that word looks weird) in it and the city sorts it for us. alas, no money. we recycle out of the goodness of our own hearts.
i needed to go to walmart to return all evidence of my addiction so i could continue packing. i also needed trash bags to put all of my stuff in for the ride home. (that turned out to be a big mistake. which helped break my ipod. rest in peace, brick.)
i had never returned cans before, and neither had riley, jacob's fraternity brother and fellow RA who's on my staff next year. he's from phoenix where they have the same system as indiana. so we got in my car and drove to walmart together with my incriminating cans in the back.
(please note that i have just completed an hour of zumba, my hair is pulled back as far as my short hair will allow it to be pulled back, and i am in exercise shorts, a jog bra, and a baggy t-shirt.)
the ride to walmart is uneventful. the indie station finally comes in just in time to play the offspring, which is not my favorite in the world. i was really hoping for some mumford, or of monsters and men. no such luck.
we pull into the parking lot and riley helps me carry my three bags of cans inside, which is nothing for him, because he's at least six five. and we run into betsie in her truck. she's going to be on our RA staff next year too. so we wave excitedly at her and run over.
her entire truck bed is full of cans and bottles.
me: that's a lot of cans.
riley: BEER CANS
me: we are not on campus. no RA mode.
betsie: it's from my parents, jeeeeez.
me: how much money do you think is in these cans?
betsie: enough for taco bell.
thinking like a true college student. i, for one, hate taco bell, but that's another post in and of itself.
so, we make our ungainly way inside of walmart, going through the wrong door, so we end up walking across the store with this incredible amount of cans filling up an entire shopping cart. we make it to the can dispenser place, and there are six dispensers. betsie kindly shows us how to put the cans in butt first and then when you're done feeding it, you press a green button and it gives you a receipt for how much money you earned.
total earnings: $2.90. not as much as i thought.
betsie, riley and i start on betsie's pile. i have a zumba song in my head and i'm shaking my hips. riley is heaving bottles out of betsie's full shopping cart and then suddenly, every single dispenser is beeping.
we filled up all the bins with betsie's cans.
me: RILEY! GUARD THE CANS FROM EVIL!
betsie: TO THE CASHIER!
riley: is this now a space mission?
me: WE'RE OUT TO DESTROY THE RING!
yes, this was still during my lord of the rings phase. which hasn't quite ended.
we find a nice lady working the self-check-out lane and she gives me my three dollars and gets somebody to clear the bins for betsie. meanwhile, she cashes betsie's receipts, and she's already at twenty bucks. and we still have a lot more.
we get back to riley. we fill two more of the bins. betsie walks away with a lotta cash.
remember when i said that i would never buy anything from wal-mart again? um. yes.
i needed tash bags. we were already here. i had three dollars. so i asked the greeter, a nice old lady, where they were.
betsie: oh don't worry, i know where they are.
nice old lady greeter: aww, let me do my job!
did betsie know where the trash bags were? of course not.
of course, we found them after riley pined away for a really big TV, and then he bought one of this big tupperware bins, because he has store stuff too, being from arizona and everything. we decide, as we are literally dancing down the aisles, that we shouldn't be caught around people, so we go to the self-check-out lane. i buy my trash bags in spanish.
check-out: por favor, tome su artÃculo fuera de la zona de embolsado.
OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER. i've never used cash before at a self-check-out machine, and it's yelling at me in spanish. i just don't know where my cash goes. so what do i do?
what any sane person does. i start screaming back at it. in spanish.
people start staring at me. i am not hispanic. what i am is a sweaty white girl in work out clothes yelling at an automated machine. in spanish.
riley: emily i think you should just pick up-
me: SILENCIO!
pretty much.
on the way out, the nice wal-mart greeter lady asked us if we knew where the bags were. when betsie said no, she chased us out of the store.
the story ends with how i bought my trash bags for ninety-seven cents and how we literally did zumba across the parking lot. i kid you not, betsie and i were doing zumba across the parking lot. and we stepped out in front of a truck and almost died. that was pretty awesome.
we followed betsie back to campus. we weren't sure what she was listening to but it involved a lot of hand flinging and hair tossing.
i got my mumford and sons. roll away your stone, if you're wondering.
on a completely unrelated note, i have found my tune for the summer, and it will probably frequently come up in the rest of this month's blog posts. prepare yourselves. and please, listen to it, it is my far the greatest thing i have heard all year.
yes. it is called "i just can't wait for booty."
let the blog every day in june go! challenge begin! and may the odds be ever in your favor. (that's another post.)
God love ya, you made a Hunger Games reference. And wtf about that vid. that's just messed in the pants. lol
ReplyDelete