Conventional wisdom says those who write for a living are best served by choosing subjects they know through experience.
That naturally means it's time for another installment of the saga of trying to shop at Wal-Mart. It's also an adventure so many readers understand best.
I've previously told of my thrills of negotiating crowded aisles and dodging the ever-increasing number of fellow shoppers, including those who prefer to ride in those little electric buggies.
I've even advocated painting numbers and decals on each cart and scheduling races around a track around the edges of air-conditioned superstores. If they'd offer bleachers and betting booths like those at Oaklawn, I'd always lay my money down on the smallest riders.
Most recently, I visited the second Wal-Mart ever to open (back in 1964). The Harrison Supercenter for weeks has been been extensively remodeling into a retailing behemoth for the 21st century.
In the process, already-narrow aisles became darned near impossible to navigate pushing a cart. And that was going one way. I got lost at one point and had to ask an associate how to find my way out of the congested and confusing jungle of clothing and such. She was clearly frustrated by fielding streams of complaints. Virtually everything I expected to find in familiar places had been moved. Walls had been erected where none had been, which led me into a dead-end maze of sorts.
I did ask one associate just what was meant by creating the store for the future. She pointed at the white linoleum tile beneath my sandals and said, "Just look how this new tile is whiter and brighter than the original floor over there."
So I looked hard for several seconds. Sure enough, by golly, she was right, I could detect the new tile was at least one, maybe two shades lighter!
That revelation came as a portly gentleman in a T-shirt bumped my arm while swerving around to enter the main flow. I've learned as a wizened Wally-Worlder to always exit any shopping aisle six inches at a time if I don't want to get clipped by an onrushing shopper or wind up nudging the derriere of another who'd stopped just around a blind corner.
One reform appears to be that associates once difficult to find or chase down for a question (always heading away from me) seem more available. A couple even stood in aisles asking if they might help. Let me rephrase. They were standing beside aisles, since those shopping pathways were as crowded as the inner chamber of a bees' nest. Someone to ask where everything had been moved to was a welcome change in the store's move into the future.
Although I'm still uncertain when, as every store item returns to earth after having been tossed hither and yon in this retrofitting, it might come to pass that in some instances aisle space could truly wind up a few inches wider.
If so, I'm all in. No longer will I have to wait for carts to either move slightly to one side or gridlock in a solid line before I'll be able to take three seconds to reach my right arm into the shelf and quickly snatch a bottle of whatever I've been waiting to grab.
Even with a smidgen of widening, I'm afraid there always will be fellow shoppers who appear to believe the store is theirs. I recognize these folks immediately when I glance down any popular aisle at the spectacle of at least a dozen with push carts and the driveable versions joined in gridlock, making it impossible for even risk-takers to enter.
Forget quickly cutting through on such an aisle from the center thoroughfare to the cold foods and meats. A decorated Supercenter veteran like myself learned a long time ago how much better off one is to take the long road around. That's not to say I don't sometimes get lucky when I find just four or five carts dotting an aisle and can weave my way past for a short cut. But those opportunities are few and far between.
If the shopping aisles are indeed growing slightly wider and associates becoming more available, I'd definitely call those positive developments for any retail store aiming to improve itself. Certainly none of that can hurt.
Hopefully, the dust from this ongoing re-creation finally will settle and I can begin to relearn where the towels went and where the cheese was moved. Until then, my survival technique when I enter the automatic doors from a superheated parking lot (where backing from a space still provides its own special thrills) is pretty well set and I'm ready to pay.
I bypass my inevitable fourth spot in the front checkout lane and make a beeline for the garden shop, where I seldom have more than one ahead of me in line. It's cooler and quieter there and I can gain a few seconds of inner peace by gazing through the glass doors at all the pretty flowers.
But I suppose I've blown that secret by sharing, haven't I?
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 06/26/2016