So, here is my true confession: I went to Wal-Mart today. Okay, there's more to it...I actually bought something there.
It wasn't so much of a necessity as it was a last resort. I got some new eyeglasses earlier in the week and I was told by the lady at the optical center that a sunglasses clip-on was not available for my frames. She also was quite frank in her assertion that I probably wouldn't find a clip-on set for the frames anywhere else. At the time, I had guessed she was blowing smoke because she was also pushing me to buy a set of prescription sunglasses. My regular set was expensive enough (even with my eye plan discount and the fact that I was buying my glasses from Sears), so I decided to go with the frames that I had selected and hope I could find some clip-ons somewhere else.
I quickly found that I was in for a long search. None of the retailers or drug stores that I visited had anything that would fit my new frames. I was pretty well resigned to the idea that I would have to either buy some giant, Elvis-sized "over glasses" shades or get used to squinting. But then my sister-in law said the dreaded two words — or maybe it's just one dreaded hyphenated word — either way, she said it: Wal-Mart. Apparently, they have a really good selection of clip-on shades. Aargh.
I have complained about Wal-Mart a lot in the past. No need to go into all of that again, I suppose. As recently as a few months ago, I got kind of salty when I found out that a friend of mine had bought a gift for me from a Wal-Mart store (Of course, she explained rather bluntly that I needed to just accept the gift and shut the hell up and I was quick to do so in an effort to avoid bodily injury.) The point is, I was getting desperate enough to check it out. I actually stopped at one more place before venturing into Wal-Mart, and I even had a huge-ass set of "over glasses" shades in my hand, but I couldn't bring myself to pay $19.99 to look that bad. Besides, I didn't have a white belt and white shoes to complete the outfit. So I stopped into Wal-Mart. I had a lot of stuff swirling in my head during the walk in...I especially thought of my pal Greg Goodlander and his essay "Waging War with Wal-Mart" from back in 2004. I also thought about the documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices" and the film's candid presentation of the retail giant's business and labor practices. And I thought about the first time that my wife took our relatives from Greece to Wal-Mart (the Notorious HDG claims that it was a Meijer store) and Thia Lena looked around and exclaimed, "Who in the hell is going to buy all of this shit?!" Union-busting, institutionalized discrimination and sexism...Yep, Wal-Mart has it all.
It had been at least three years since I had even set foot in a Wal-Mart and I hadn't bought anything because I was so uncomfortable. Wal-Mart stores have a surreal, circus-like feeling to me and I remember well the last conversation I overheard when I visited Wal-Mart several years ago. A kid of about seven or eight years of age had picked up a package of colored markers and he showed them to his mom:
Kid: These look very useful.
Mom: Everything you say is stupid and I'm getting tired of it.
Mom: Everything you say is stupid and I'm getting tired of it.
Wow. Way to go. The "Supermom" t-shirts are in aisle six between the giant metal canisters of caramel popcorn and the floral print Bible slipcovers, lady. I left the store empty-handed after overhearing that exchange that day. When I went back today, that conversation was still ringing in my ears. I hoped that nobody that I knew would see me there. Of course, I did run into someone there and we had a brief, obligatory exchange. I had also kind of hoped that I would come up empty-handed on my search for a decent clip-on despite the fact that I was already tired of squinting from the bright summer sun. But I didn't leave empty-handed this time.
The long and short of this story is that they had clip-ons that were a perfect fit. And they were far cheaper than the gigantic spot-welding goggles at the drugstore. So, I bought them. I'm not proud, but I can now see comfortably when I'm outside.
Damn. I feel sooooo dirty.
