I went to Wal-Mart down on IH-35 today. Eleven days before Christmas, I went to Wal-Mart. Kick me. Jesus, is there any place more miserable than a Wal-Mart in a low income Texas neighborhood in the middle of the Christmas season? If it’s not the 30-member family all screaming at each other in housewares, it’s the drunk couple laughing hysterically in cosmetics. Oh, and we can’t forget about the blue-haired lady pushing the shopping cart through toys with a box of wrapping paper sticking sideways out of her cart and thus knocking things off the shelves as she passes, all the while saying, “This Wal-Mart sure is a mess!” Ger! Da! Yes, that was me, reduced to sputtering nonsense like a primate. And then, like hell-fire from above, a lady got on the loudspeaker and shouted, “WEEG FRAIDDAY HUNNYDIS A BROWN FROND TO HAYULP LASTOYANCE ON REGISTER 10 PUH-LEASE.” Yikes. I made a mental note to stay away from register 10 … it sounded like something awful was happening there. Finally deciding that they didn’t have what I needed, I left through the garden center. That’s a neat trick I’ve learned–garden center almost always has an exit out. It beats the hell out of fighting that 30 member family who is now invading registers 3 through 21. On my way back to the car (I had to park in Egypt, by the way), I counted twelve vehicles sporting stylish gas-station-checkout-counter American flag stickers. Eight of those twelve vehicles were gas-guzzling SUVs. “I’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…..”