It all happens at Walmart

Ten-AM on a Tuesday. The greeter says hello as I make my way past the aisles of Valentine’s cards and discounted fleece hoodies towards the home section. I’m looking for a very specific pillow, and I figure the home goods section is as good a place to start as any. 

In the middle aisle, between neatly stacked boxes of Drew Barrymore kitchen appliances and a bin of Squishmallows, two gray-haired women have their sparsely-filled carts pushed close together. They’re taking their half out of the middle. “Well you heard about their daughter,” the one says to the other. Their heads shifting ever so slightly closer. I’ll never know about the daughter, even though I will always wonder. I imagine these women probably go to church together. Or their kids went to school together. Or they were neighbors once upon a time when they were young and first married. Commiserating about formica tables and planning Tupperware parties. 

I don’t find what I’m looking for in the home section. On my way to the baby section, I get lost, so I take the long way past the bicycles, past the fishing gear, past the craft supplies. Backdropped by a wall of 42-inch flat-screen 4K TVs, a woman in her 50s casually thumbs through a book pulled from the “inspirational reads” display stocked with King James Bibles, 5-minute-a-day devotional journals, and Chicken Soup for the Soul titles. She probably leads a Bible study in her neighborhood. Has a few grandkids named “Nash” or “Marleigh.” I bet she’s been going to that church for more than thirty years. 

I find what I need and head back towards the front by way of incongruous stacks of Vital Proteins Collagen powder and Diet Mountain Dew. Everyone looks tired. World-weary. A young mom with young kids - mom and girls in skirts - navigates the landmine that is the ice cream aisle. I run into someone I used to know. She’s my youngest sister's age and has a tiny baby named Theodore. She’s there exchanging newborn diapers for something larger. She still goes to the church I used to attend. 

The day before, Mom and I went to Target to look for this pillow. As we leave her street she says, “There’s Amanda” and waves at the USPS carrier making her way along her route. Mom goes out of her way to drive me past Where They’re Rebuilding That House That Burned Down. You know, it’s the one across the street from That House With The Brahman Bulls. Which, of course, is around the corner from That House With The Blackout Windows. It’s the new one Hurricane Heather built. You remember her, right? Bill and Kathy’s daughter. The stuff of life. 

When we get to Target, I hear all about the Californians and their Lexuses. How they want to bring their dogs in everywhere. How these young girls in their fur coats just leave their carts in the next parking space over instead of taking it to the cart return. She’s seen it happen twice. We walk in and Mom hugs a woman stocking shelves in the Bullseye section. Mom asks her about her grandbaby. The woman pulls out her phone and shows us a squishy baby with a bow bigger than her head. It’s not the first person she’s hugged the last few days. 

A few days later we’re in Food City looking for fatback. Apparently, not everyone sells it anymore. There’s a Starbucks kiosk next to the register bank. I treat my Mom and sister to a latte. A man in his 80s gets in line behind us. Bills in hand, he orders a Venti Mocha Frappuccino, one pump of the base, and one of the mocha. It’s well practiced. The girl asks if he wants whipped cream. He says no, then says, “wait, yes, she does like that. It’s for my wife. She’s a diabetic.” It’s the only Starbucks around for miles. It seems like that’s the only reason he’s there.  

We get the fatback. The woman at the register has a Northern accent. My Mom asks where she’s from. “Northern Illinois,” she says. “I’ve been here for a year.” Mom asks her if she likes it. She says she does. It’s not the first conversation I’ve heard like this in the last few days. 

Unprompted in one of these stores, after an odd, but not notable exchange with a clerk (she pushed a cart towards us and then said we couldn’t have it), this woman walks up to us and says, “didn’t you think that was weird customer service?” We agree. We happen to see her at the front of the store again as we’re leaving and Mom says, “You didn’t make it very far did you?” The woman says she didn’t and they share a laugh.

People wave here. People break your personal bubble here. They ask about your family. They ask you where you live. They casually touch you on your arm when they’re talking. The community's business is your business. They are one in the same.  

I’m not saying this is better or worse than the way things are in the big city I live in. There’s obviously a lot of poverty and racism and otherism and isolationism. It’s not a bucolic dream world. It’s not Walden Pond. 

And yet, I think about how lonely it can be in the world. I think about these people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, working minimum wage jobs because it’s the only job they’ve ever had and ever will have. I think about how humanizing it is to ask them about their day and to share a laugh or a hug. I think about my friend who said it had been months since someone had touched them. 

There must be something to all of this hugging, prodding, and touching. All this stuff of life. Perhaps it is an invasion of privacy. But perhaps it’s just being human.