A Wal Mart Story

It was a well planned Friday.

• Get up
• Work out at the gym
• Come home
• Shower
• Feed children
• Dress children
• Drop off older children at school
• Stop at Wal Mart (because it opens before 9AM)
• Come home
• Play games, read books, educate my 2 and 3 year old
• Lunch
• Nap
• Etc ...

This story takes place at Wal Mart (I realize the title already told you that, but I have to start somewhere).  I was shopping for a birthday gift for my newly turned 15 year old and some snacks for a quick trip to Indiana for the weekend.  Among my items for purchase were cute little bottles of pop - grape and strawberry (purple and red), to be specific.  I got six of them - so I let Wesley (W), my three-year old hold three of them and Lauren (L), my two-year old hold the other three of them (sounds fair, right?).

W instantly started vigorously shaking his pop, and was pretty excited about it, too.  I attempted to educate him on the cause and effect principles of adding pressure to a sealed bottle of carbonated beverage, but my lecture fell on deaf ears, and he continued to shake the pop in his care (this is foreshadowing).

As I continued to browse the aisles trying to find a perfect birthday gift for my eldest, W and L began arguing over who was going to have more purple pops and who was going to have more reds.  After some Mother Intervention into the argument there was peace . . . for about 30 seconds.

During one more effort for L to win the dominance of the purple pop, W dropped the aforementioned pressure loaded beverage.  The bomb landed direclty between my feet, and effectively emptied its (almost) entire contents in a spray-like fashion up between my legs, soaking my socks, khaki skirt, and a radius around me of about 20 feet in the middle of the aisle, right next to the bicycles (in the back of the store).

There was an instant and lasting peace that fell upon two stunned children.  Of course, there was not an employee to be found to report the purple sticky mess to, so we trekked back to the front of the store to report the disaster to the service counter.  Then, after maintenance was paged to report with a mop to the bicycle section, I returned to the crime scene to offer some assistance in the cleanup, which was denied (I was thankful - I was ready to get out of there!).

So with sticky legs and a new tie-dye skirt, we quickly chose a gift, finalized our purchses, endured a "test of the fire alarm system", stopped by the bathroom (because EVERY trip to a store requires an emergency visit to the public facilities), and went home.