|
How My Boyfriend Became a Drug-Dealing Terrorist at Wal*Mart
Erin Abernethy A couple of weeks ago--about mid-December--I took my (considerably older) boyfriend shopping at Wal*Mart. Not that I wanted to torture him or anything, but he needed a cold-weather hat. He has chronic sinus and allergy problems, and the doctor had strongly suggested (for about the fifteenth time) that bundling up a little more to go out in cold weather would be a good idea. So I dragged him off to look at toboggan caps and wool hats and so on. (Yeah, I know, a "toboggan" is technically a sled, but lots of us grew up calling those ugly little knit caps "toboggans" because we never knew any other name for them. I brought a nice old man out to shop for a hat, and I'm taking home a meth-making terrorist who assaults policemen by sneezing on them.Sleds, on the other hand, have a perfectly good name. It's not going to kill them to lend their alternate name to a hat once in awhile when we have to discuss things like winter caps.) My boyfriend was appalled by the crowds (he has a mild phobia about it) so I grabbed his sleeve the minute we got into the store to prevent him from changing his mind and fleeing to the car. "Hats are this way," I pointed. "Why don't we just stop at the pharmacy on the way home and get some super heavy-duty industrial-strength Nyquil and I can sleep until winter's over?" he suggested as we navigated past the candy, birthday cards, bulletin boards, vacuum cleaners and fishing equipment. "Because I've driven around for thirty minutes to get a parking spot, and you're already here now," I said, stopping in the middle of the long, narrow aisle full of winter apparel. "I'm not wearing those," he snorted, waving at a peg full of multicolored mittens. "Fine. What kind of hat would you like?" "Well," he hedged, looking over the colorful array of earmuffs, gloves, scarves, mittens, mufflers, wraps and hats. "Something plain." Apparently he was traumatized in early childhood by a Hawaiian shirt or something and never quite got over it. I quickly found out that his idea of "plain" meant absolutely no snowflake patterns or dancing reindeer or pom-poms or fake fur trim or dangling tie-strings or--gasp--any color brighter than forest green. This meant that the options were severely limited. (Especially by the time you take into account that his head definitely does not fall into that "one-size-fits-all" category. It's not noticeably huge, but watching him struggle into a pullover sweater could take the better part of an hour.) After a lot of hemming and hawing and shuffling around, and being jostled and mauled by those oh-so-cheery shopping mobs, he finally settled on a plain black ski mask. Cover the mouth and nose too, don't breathe cold air, better for the sinuses, right? Sounds good. And black goes with everything, so it'll look just as good with his ratty old denim jacket as it will with his too-fine-to-be-legal black raincoat. Perfect. "Try it on," I said. "No," he balked. "I'm sure it'll be OK. I'm ready to go. I'll try it on when we get home." "Oh, no, you'll try it on right here and now," I insisted. "If you get home and it doesn't fit, we'll have to come back into this madhouse to return or exchange it." He gave up and reluctantly tugged it halfway onto his head. "Well, go on--pull it all the way on," I prodded. "Make sure you can breathe and all that." As he struggled into the thing, a gaggle of shoppers meandered their way down the crowded aisle, followed by a stocky grandmother pushing a snot-nosed child in her shopping cart. The woman was wearing enough perfume to drown three French whores. She stopped beside us, waiting for the group in front to move along--and my boyfriend, getting a whiff of her eau-de-rotting-flowers stink, started sneezing uncontrollably. This attracted the attention of the snot-nosed kid in the shopping cart, who began pointing and screaming, "Mammaw! Lookit, it's a robber!" Within seconds everyone in the aisle was glancing nervously in our direction and murmuring "robber" amongst themselves, and then I began to hear them shifting from the word "robber" to the word "terrorist." Between hellacious sneezes measuring about an 8 on the Richter scale, my boyfriend frantically clawed at the ski-mask. I helped peel it off his face as the kid's grandmother charged determinedly ahead, smacking the boy as he gawked from his perch in the shopping cart. "Sit down and hush up or that terrorist will GET you!" she brayed. "Wudderful," my boyfriend snuffled, "all these people--who probably have shotguns outside in their pick-up trucks--think I'm a terrorist." "Sure you don't want the pretty red one?" I teased, waving a very cheery knit cap at him. It had teddy bears embroidered on the ear flaps. "Bite me," he muttered. "Got any Kleenex?" he added, just before going into another sneezing seizure. As I dug some tissues out of my pocket for him, I heard my name being called. "Hey!" one of the sales associates grinned, waving and hurrying over. "Do you know this guy?" my mortified boyfriend asked from behind his wad of Kleenex. "I think he was in my American Lit class," I mumbled as the blue-vested bundle of cheer bore down on us. "Whoa, that was some final exam!" the goober greeted me. "I'm sure it didn't give you any trouble, though. So! Out doing a little shopping with your dad, huh?" he asked brightly, reaching to shake hands with my now-thoroughly-embarrassed boyfriend. "Oh, no," I smiled, slapping the sticky ski-mask into his overeager hand. "We're just here to rob the place and plant a bomb or two. Could you see if you have this in a larger size?" "Never mind that," my boyfriend spoke up. "Where's the pharmacy section? We'll just pick up some sinus tablets and go home." The goober pointed us toward the front corner, and I led the way. "Looks like they have plenty of it," I commented. "I should probably stock up," my boyfriend suggested. "The places I usually go always run out of it. I guess it's the weather. I had no idea so many people around here had sinus and allergy problems." I loaded up his arms and steered him toward the front registers, where we waited in a slow-moving line while the check-out lady haphazardly cleaned up after a customer who'd dropped one of her three super-sized boxes of powdered laundry detergent, causing it to burst open and spill its contents on the conveyor belt. In line just ahead of us was an off-duty cop who kept glancing our way. "Why does he keep looking at me like that?" my boyfriend mumbled in my ear. "He's probably wondering why anyone in their right mind would be going outside without a hat in this cold weather," I replied. He grumbled and muttered under his breath about Wal*Marters and shoppers and terrorists, and kept making strange faces as he tried not to start sneezing again. Eventually we worked our way up to the register and I unloaded the eighteen boxes of Sudafed he'd been carrying. The grouchy lady wearing the smiley button rang us up, threw the boxes into a plastic bag, and we headed out to the car. "Hold on just a second," someone rumbled as we stepped out the door. It was the off-duty cop, blocking our way. "Where you folks goin' with all that?" "Taking it home to put in the medicine cabinet with the other six boxes, why?" I shrugged. "I know what you're up to!" he barked. "I'b dot a terr'ist!" my boyfriend protested as his sinuses clogged up again. "I know all about y'all people cookin' up that Sudafed in y'all's methamphetamine labs!" the cop scowled. "You oughta be ashamed, getting your daughter involved in something like that!" "Come on," I sighed, tugging my boyfriend's sleeve. "We need to get out of here. Places to bomb, people to shoot, you know." "I'll be watching you!" the cop warned, getting up in our faces so close we could smell his aftershave. My boyfriend began sneezing violently. "I can't take you anywhere," I said later in the car as I dug out more Kleenex for him. "I brought a nice old man out to shop for a hat, and I'm taking home a meth-making terrorist who assaults policemen by sneezing on them. What have you got to say for yourself?" "I say maybe you should listen the next time your 'father' says he'd just as soon stop at the drugstore," he muttered. "Got any more Kleenex?" © Copyright 2004-2007 Erin Abernethy |