Glutton for punishment

Wal-Mart is evil. I think most of us can agree on that. So why is it that we keep going back?
I'll tell you why. It's because where else can I go to buy potting soil, three yards of fabric, diapers, steaks, a birthday pinata, Claritin, computer paper, and a new bra all at once?
Like a Hershey's chocolate bar, it keeps calling me back for more. Like a shoe sale at the mall, it drags me in to spend money that I don't really have.
I go in for mascara, I come out with zucchini, cheddar cheese popcorn, girl's High School Musical underwear, a Thomas the Tank Engine video, and new bath towels. No mascara, because I forgot to get it.
Like a black hole, Wal-Mart sucks me in, and before I know it, I am standing outside by my car four hours later with three bags and a seventy-dollar receipt, trying to figure out where the heck the time and my money went.
I think I'll get George the engineer on this one. It should make an interesting study.
And that's another thing. One time I heard George tell the kids, who were complaining about having to go with us to Wal-Mart, "Well, I don't want to go either, but we have to. Every time we go there, your mother and I almost get a divorce."
And it's true. We pull into the parking lot smiling and hopeful, shopping list in hand. We think to ourselves, "This is going to be quick. In and out. We only have a few things to get."
Then somehow, between the ten minutes it takes to park and dodging shopping carts as frantic people hurl around the aisles without watching out for other shoppers, our smiles begin to slip. Sometime while we are waiting for the three old friends to break up their reunion and move out of the middle of the cereal aisle so we can get the ("It has to be the Cars cereal, mom!") freaking breakfast cereal and get out before the baby starts wailing, and trying to hunt down someone to find out if the size one sneakers are the ONLY ones they're out of, we start to get a headache. Then, during the twenty minutes standing in line at one of the three check-out lanes open while the children beg for the multitude of candy taunting them from the racks and the cheap two-dollar toys and bottles of hand-sanitizer just within reach of their chubby little fingers, we start to lose our tempers, perhaps even threaten a spanking when a toddler refuses to continue sitting in the shopping cart and starts yelling "Stop it!" while you try to keep his stubborn little butt from toppling out. So, understandably, when your husband asks whether it's really necessary for you to buy the "seven dollar foundation" (even though when you questioned the necessity for the laser-guided scissors he purchased at Harbor Freight last week, he got huffy), you snap "They don't make anything any cheaper, unless you want me to stick my head in one of the grocery bags, which I'm sure would solve a couple of problems! Then you could collect my life insurance and marry a wife with a bigger rack!" deliberately loud enough for the cashier and the couple behind you to hear.
Of course, once you get to the car, load up your groceries, and get the kids buckled in, you begin to feel your head clear. Once you're safely out of the parking lot, you wonder what had even caused the argument in the first place. The kids are good as gold now, perhaps even asleep, if you had to make an after-dinner emergency run.
OK, Wal-mart is basically the gateway to hell.

So why, why, did I head there first thing this morning with both Lucy and Drake and a shopping list consisting of diapers and a large fake spider for Halloween? I don't know, but when I came out sixty-two dollars later at quarter past noon, I had forgotten the spider. And I bought the wrong size costume pattern because Drake was pulling the pattern drawers open and throwing the size dividers onto the floor.
So guess what? I have to go back tomorrow. But that's not even the worst part.
The worst part is that when I go back tomorrow, I have to take the wrong-sized pattern and stand in line at customer service.
How's that for a scary story?