Kindness at Walmart

I've had this problem lately, of knocking things down. Just the other day, I was shaking a container of coffee at Target, trying to shake out the last of the Decaf Cinnamon Coffee (tm) beans when I accidentally shook loose the bin on top. That one went crashing to the floor behind me. It slipped out and over my shoulder like a scud missle and exploded all over the floor. Coffee beans were everywhere.

That's just one example of these incidents that seem to have been occuring lately. It's as if some little gremlin is following me and directing me to trip here and there. So yesterday, I decided to visit my local Walmart for some grocery shopping. Part of this trip invovled gathering some medicinal stuff such as contact solution and some beauty items. Not so out of the ordinary. But part of this journey included navigating through the recently widened isles with a rather large shopping cart. For someone who's single and used to grabbing a carry basket, a shopping cart is like going from a Toyota Corolla to a Ford F150 desiel.

After picking up my contact solution, I wheeled my F150 around the left corner and up the nutrition asile. One lady was kind enough to move out of my way as she saw me coming. "Cool", I thought, "she moved for me. This isn't so hard." Continuing my voyage, I started thinking about all of the things I had to do tonight and tommorow. Lots of work and lots of grading and planning. I turned my cart sharply right, confident in my auto-pilot state while keeping an eye out for pedestrians. And then, it happened.

The left part of my cart clocked a display case holding cute, rounded makeup packages for little girls...cute pink and yellow tubes with sparkles, hanging neatly on hooks, mounted to a display that was hanging, how I don't know, mid-air on the end cap of an asile.

As my cart pushed against the side of the cardbord display, something unhooked itself. Then, like those buildings they implode in Las Vegas, the display started falling apart. It happend in slow motion and I had an audience consisting of a family of three to watch. At first, the display box itself started slipping off whatever magical invisible thing that was holding it up. Then, as it was falling straight down, it started leaning forward. Then, one by one like the Rockets in formation, the little, cute, pink, rounded packages of girly makeup started slipping off their short plastic hooks, throwing themselves out into the aisle I was in, and some even slid their way into the main aisle.

As the four of us watched helplessley while the little disc like packages tossed themselves to and fro, all I could think was "I should have grabbed a basket instead". Finally, when it was all over, the family of three took immediate action. They started picking up the little diks of girly makeup and repositioned the cardbord display case so it was at least standing partiall upright.

As they helped me replace the little makeup packages, I thanked them several times. Their small 2 year old daughter saw what her parents were doing and picked up a package, carefully placing it on one of the hooks. "Thank you so much!" I said in my sweetest talk-to-small-children voice. How cool, I thought, that these people are not only doing the right thing by helping someone else, but that their daughter is taking a direct example from them.

Despite my klutzyness, here I am, in the middle of Walmart, experiencing kindness and love from two complete strangers. My retail mishap was just further proof that there are good people in this world doing good things. They just don't make the 5 o'clock news.

As I thanked them again and left the scene of the incident, I pushed my cart toward the electronics. I needed to see if they had a better price on a monitor. When I stopped to look at some candles, I looked down in my cart and noticed three of the little pink, girly makeup packages hitchiking in my cart. Their glitter sitckers and fruity lip gloss was shinning back at me. "Damn" I thought. "Now I have to go back."

I did go back to put them back where they belong. But this time, I parked my cart two asiles away from the display scene of the crime. Carefully placing each package on a hook, I stood up slowly as if not to make any sudden movement to cause the display case alarm, and I backed away quietly. Slowly. Carefully. When it was all clear, I turned around and walked back to my cart two blocks away, praying that the display would stay up until I was far down another asile.

My apologies to the employees of Walmart. And my gratitude and love to the nice people who helped a stranger pick up their mess. It's a good shopping trip when you find kindness at a Walmart. Kindness is everywhere. Somtimes it takes a little accident to prove it.