Thursday, July 22, 2010


Yesterday I went shopping with my spouse. The mission was to buy me a new pair of pants but it turned into a much more extensive undertaking. She is a pro at the shopping business and has the stamina of a wild dog of Africa. Even the shortest shopping excursion is like a marathon to me. I was ready to be hospitalized after a couple of hours. When we finally got to our last stop at Sam’s, I sat down to watch the people near the checkout while my spouse made several laps around the store.

The experience watching people at Sam’s is enough to fill the blog Journal for several months. Temple is not a huge city but there were long lines of folks with baskets brimming. Where do all these people come from? I didn’t know or recognize a soul. I also couldn’t figure out how we are in a recession from seeing the huge quantities of goods purchased by folks who looked like they were from the movie “Deliverance.”

I had just returned from buying my pair of pants and had to purchase a pair that required altering. I’m getting near the upper limits of the waist size that is available in most stores. I’m overweight but fortunately not in the obese category according to a dietitian I recently consulted. My leg length is out of proportion to my waist circumference. The young salesperson at Macy’s checked on her computer and said none of the stores in the state have my exact size. I guess I am an anomaly but I’m proud to be so unique.

Anyway, as I observed the specimens going through checkout at Sams I would say that over 75% fall into the obese category. My abdominal girth would be much less than the majority of those folks, including woman and some kids. If you checked their shopping basket it was apparent why. The baskets were filled with potato chips and other high calorie stuff, which must be purchased in bulk at Sam’s. The thing that puzzled me the most, after my experience buying pants, was where do these people get their clothes? Maybe there is a circus supply house close by that I don’t know about.

Anyway, I’m happy to be back on the porch. I don’t feel like eating anything for a while.

1 Comments:

Blogger jeff ludwick said...

I have said for years that if I were back in graduate school (God forbid) that I would lean towards a thesis on the customers that frequent both Sam's and Walmart. I haven't seen a movie in decades that is the equivalent of sitting on one of their benches and just taking it in. The leopard and pajama outfits, the amount of flesh that can actually hang out of clothing, the beautiful barefooted children with rat-tail and mohawk haircuts, the rainbow of hair coloring, the art work on the tattoos and, of course, the wonder of the body piercings and jewelry hanging from people's ear, noses, lips and tongues. Makes me want to shout out "...America, America, God shed His Grace on thee..."

5:29 AM  

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