What is it about Wal-Mart?

I know I have plenty of solid reasons to avoid Wal-Mart. I don’t go that often. Honest. But I do like to spend not too much money on things, especially the kids’ clothes since there is a better than even chance that it will be permanently stained with chocolate frozen yogurt or “washable” paints before it’s even been through it's first rotation in our laundry room. We don’t have Target in Canada (as far as I know) and sometimes I need to do a Wal-mart run. And sometimes I have to take the kids.

Now, I like to think of myself as very experienced in dealing with kids and tantrums in public locations everywhere. Schools, malls, parks, church. You name the place and I’ve been on the receiving end of passing bystanders that:

a) Stare with condemnation as if to say: “can’t you control your child? You know in my day, the kids would never have the nerve to yell ‘You are not my mother’ ”
b) Stare with pity and relief as if to say: “Sister, I have so been there. Thank goodness it’s not me today!”

So I know about managing the situation by:

a) taking the kids on fewer rather than more errands
b) going on a day when the stars align and their moods are both good (or at least neither is extremely foul)
c) not doing too much on one day
d) planning something for them to see, do, experience, eat or buy (see Consequences, for example)

So when I was first brave enough to take them both on errands, on occasion it was to Wal-Mart. And I started noticing how badly they behaved. And more importantly how badly I reacted. I’m generally pretty good about getting the kids to the car mid meltdown. It’s not easy, it’s not fun and I usually break a sweat. But I can do it. But the first time I took them both to Wal-Mart they were both carrying on like demon-possessed and I was sorely tempted to do what I heard threatened as a child and"knock their heads together" (though I resisted). It happened a second time and pretty much every time after. Coincidence? I think not.

Today, I had to exchange a pair of shoes. At Payless. Which is beside Wal-Mart and the fastest way (so I thought) to accomplish this task was to (shudder) park in the Wal-Mart lot and race through Wal-Mart to Payless and zip back through Wal-Mart and safely and easily back to the car. I was not even going to slow down on my way through as I would have 4 year old S with me.

She’s a pretty good companion as long as things don’t last too long or I have sugar for her. The errand in Payless took 10 minutes instead of the 2 that I anticipated. On the return routing through Wal-Mart S runs off (I want to say that she never does but this is the second blog where I’ve mentioned it so I can’t say never any more). Anyway after I had her by my side she saw a swimming pool that she had to have. This was not even a princess pool or a pink one. It was a 12 foot wide pool that would take up half of our backyard even if I could get over my phobia of ever having a pool in our backyard for water safety reasons.

She screamed “I WANT THAT POOL!!”. Not even reminding her of the possibility of McDonalds for lunch pulled her back from the ledge. We left the store without lunch to the sounds of “I’M NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN”, which would not have been a bad thing right then if she would have actually stopped talking to me. The walk to the car would have been quiet. But she would not pass up on an opportunity to kvetch, fuss and moan about the fact that the swimming pool was not strapped to the top of the van or that I wouldn’t let her run through the parking lot alone (which is about as safe as letting her across a freeway in L.A.)

I don’t know if it’s the kids or me or something Wal-mart (or its competitors) pipe into the air, but I’ve got yet another reason to stay the heck away from there.