Shop-Noxious
2005

So there I stood, in Wal-Mart, after being in the store for about an hour, feeling like my pores were expanding, my face becoming flushed, my nose turning red, my eyes feeling buggy, my brain feeling something like I was on dental-chair gas; feeling lost, feeling like I might faint, and wondering what on earth was wrong with me. I grabbed a box of animal crackers off a nearby shelf and began shoving lions, tigers, and bears into my mouth; trying to bring my blood sugar up and basically keep myself from keeling over on the floor.

I know, this sounds rather strange. I thought maybe I was just having a bad day. But it wasn’t the first time I had felt this way in Wal-Mart. I’ve since done some field experiments. You know, lab rat stuff. (I’m the lab rat.) I’ve found that I can go to Wal-Mart any time of the day or night, spend upwards of half an hour in there, and end up feeling the same way. Buggy, dopey, lost, and confused.

I really wanted to know what this was about. Was I becoming such a hard-core liberal that merely being in the presence of big corporate America was affecting me physically? Couldn’t be. And then one day recently, I happened to casually broach the topic with a friend of mine.

“I know exactly what you’re talking about”, she said. “I’m allergic to any store that sells cheap stuff”.

I burst out laughing, slapped my knee hard, then realized she was dead serious. Turns out she’s probably got what’s called “multiple chemical sensitivity”, though some doctors are a bit baffled by Wal-Mart Dummy Syndrome, which is what I prefer to call it. Wally Mart is a very intense chemical experience. Like many stores of its sort that sell “cheap stuff”, that is, cheaply-manufactured plastic and synthetic “stuff”, it is chock full of chemical irritants.

But I do believe the Wal-Mart ill goes beyond that for me. Thinking in terms of the mind-body-spirit mantra of yoga, Wal-Mart affects me on every level. I dread going. Sure, it’s the chemical-laden atmosphere, it’s the shadowless lighting, it’s the soft woozy music. But it’s even more. Let’s say I want to buy just two simple things; PMS pills and chocolate chip cookies (for example.) I fear I will go into the store and get lost and end up spending an hour or two and about a hundred dollars before I’m finished. Somewhere I imagine there are Ivy-League graduates working for Sam Walton who want me to get lost in there. They are PhD’s in the anatomy of the female brain and they know exactly what I’m going to buy and just how to construct the store so I must wander and wander those big confusing aisles in order to find what I’m looking for.

Here’s a slice of how my field research has gone:

JACUZZI AS WAL-MART LAB RAT: SESSION 4-A. I enter Wal-Mart. I am greeted by a smiling senior who wants to put a sticker on my lapel. There’s a deliberate impression they want to give me. I am welcomed. I am home. I belong. Middle America loves me. Buying in bulk can heal despair.

I am ushered by the first onslaught of items touted to be on sale. How long has it been since I played “Yahtzee”?, I think to myself. Too long. Too long. I pick up a game board. $9.99 for all that nostalgia; and the pleasure of rousing the spirit of my dead Uncle Mo who used to play it with me. Priceless. One day I will give it to Goodwill, still unopened. I will feel generous.

Next I move in the direction of my PMS pills. I know they are somewhere over by dog food. Bow wow. And wow, oh wow. I come upon a display of nail polish on sale for a third of the usual cost. I haven’t polished my nails in six years, and it’s about time to take it up again. I can reclaim my youth for 99 cents. I can reclaim it in an inexpensive acrylic base and a color called “watermelon”. How delicious. Nail polish, I’d like you to meet Yahtzee. Welcome to my life.

On toward my PMS pills, when behold, visions of the man in my life needing a new electric razor -- there’s a display that assures me smooth chins come for a rolled-back price of $19.99. That’s less than twenty dollars, by the way. And eventhough I don’t happen to have a scruffy scruff in my life at the moment, there will come a day, and it would make a perfect stocking stuffer whenever that day comes. $19.99 for a future man-o-mine devoid of nasty scruff. It’s great to be alive. I wink at a Wally smiley face that is always winking back. What a flirt.

I finally find the PMS pill assortment and I reach for the fifty pound tub because it’s .08 cents cheaper per hundred pills, or something along those lines. By this time, I’m starting to feel buggy-eyed. I need to find my cookies, and somehow I keep thinking of dog food. Bow wow. I buy some, and I have no idea why. I begin to wander. I feel lost. My thoughts are growing thin. I find myself staring at a sale display for three-foot-high Barbie Rapunzels. Do I need one of these? Suddenly, I’m not sure. Perhaps. She’s a sight to behold. Who says injection molding isn’t art?

I’m now feeling quite lost. PMS pills in hand, I’m wondering how to navigate my way from the gun aisle back to chocolate chip cookies.

I make my way to the checkout where I stand in a long line and already start feeling remorse over what I see myself lifting onto the counter. (Yahtzee? Am I crazy?) I pay. I wheel my wares to the car, realize I never did find the cookies which was the one thing I wanted more than anything else. I get home, lay in the sun on my lawn, trying to air myself out from that alternate reality known as “more for less”. I’ve saved money, hypothetically, but somehow I’ve still spent a hundred dollars on a trip that was supposed to yield two inexpensive items.

Gotta hand it to Sam Walton