A Different Kind of Better

I love Walmart. I absolutely love it because I know the moment I walk in there I am the hottest, healthiest, wealthiest being in the building. All fifty-thousand square feet of the building. I am none of these things anywhere else, but at Wal-Mart I am all of these things at once.
I call it my Walmart strut. I stroll right through the charities selling cookies on the pavement. Proceed past the social-securitied security. Sashay along the overweight eateries filled with the obese. And I haven’t even snagged me a basket yet.
I move on through the men’s department and I hear everyone whisper, “Hey, where’d that guy get those clothes.” I struggle on past the kids section knowing that these toddlers can’t hold a candle to my offspring. I skip through crafts, ramble past electronics, saunter through sporting goods and amble along automotive.
I’m not here shopping for anything. I’m here just for the cheap confidence thrill. In Wal-Mart I feel two inches taller; my wallet feels two inches thicker and inseam feels, well, like it needs to be taken out.
Ok, I’m joking…a little.  This whole draft is a little tongue in cheek. And if you haven’t gotten the joke yet...just stop reading now. Because you’re not going to like the rest.
I am not wealthy, by far. I am not healthy. Shit I’m not. And I’m not hot, not since the sixth-grade. But every time I’m at Walmart there’s a moment where I admit to myself, “I ain’t got it so bad.”
Call it comparative wealth.
Sometimes one needs a little reminder at one’s wealth, even if that wealth is an otherwise middle-class suburban model of prosperity. One’s wealth comes from within. Sad as it is, sometimes you need to rub elbows with all corners of the world to measure it. That’s why we watch Jerry Springer. It’s why we watch Judge Judy. It’s why we watch the news. And it’s why I go to Walmart.
I truly feel better about my life when I leave Wal-Mart. Not the kind of better that I feel when leaving Whole Foods or Wegmans. A different kind of better.
There is always someone yelling at a child. Always a pregnant teenager. Always one mouth missing teeth. And always one person who’s mere presence threatens the fuck out of me.
When we were being bad as children my mother would drive my sister and I through the streets of lower-class neighboring cities to prove this point. “You wanna fight over toys?” she would say. “Let me show you a neighborhood where there are no toys.”
She actually put us in the car and drove us past rotten row homes and real-life street vagabonds. It never really quite worked. My sister and I didn’t really understand the implications of this exercise. We would gaze out the window pointing. Eventually my mother would lock the doors, hit the gas pedal and scream at us to stop staring.
This was her version of a Walmart strut. Perhaps, she did it more for herself then for us.
I rarely take my children to Walmart. Not that they don’t deserve a lesson in comparative wealth. Mostly I’m just afraid of what they might say out of observation. Once, my oldest son very loudly pointed out a woman’s beard. Her beard looked like mine. This was at Walmart. And I ran out leaving my basket of cost-saving goods. That was enough for us.
Much has been made over the last decade about Walmart’s reign on the multi-inventory retail industry. Walmart has been both blessed and lambasted for its employee relations. Walmart has been praised and reprimanded for its business model. Wal-Mart is both the savior and the evil empire all at once. In four decades Sam Walton has established one of the most controversial and bi-polar business’ we’re likely to see again.
This is what makes walking through Walmart such a wonder. Walmart steals from the poor then gives back to the poor. The world can agree to disagree on a lot, but the following is true. Walmart, the collective company, is rich. Walmart, the collective culture, is not.
Know this; I too shop at Walmart. I give Walmart my money. Not a lot, but enough. I like a guilty-please as much as the next guy. I was there last night. I ate at McDonald’s and browsed the Disney Cars section. And once again, I was the wealthiest, healthiest and hottest person there. And I was in Princeton!
Thank you, Mr. Walton for the free shot of confidence boost in my arm! I was jonesing for that.

This post was originally posted in March 2010 at http://www.mypatheticblog.tumblr.com/.