The President-Eject & The President-Elect

There are two kinds of ignorance. Neither of them bliss. There is the forgivable kind, the kind of ignorance that is smart enough to recognize itself, and ambitious enough to seek the remedy of counsel and education. And then there is that other kind of ignorance. This is the kind of ignorance that is so convinced of its inherent wisdom, it borders on religion because, in spite of any tangible proof, it remains devoted to itself. Sometimes this ignorance looks a lot like stubbornness and arrogance. This is the ignorance that fails to notice the fact that even the stupid people in the room think it's hopelessly stupid.

Granted, we are all ignorant to a certain degree. As it has been said, none of us will ever know all of the things we will never know. And yet, after eight years of cringing while I watched presidential press conferences and interviews through my fingers, I know that the person in charge come January 2009 will be (sigh of relief) intelligent. I don't know what Barack Obama's term as president will bring, but I am hopeful, and I am listening, and what I am hearing sounds like English...and a plan.

Now, just to be clear, I have never thought President George W. Bush to be an evil man. I still don't. When people compare him to Hitler I am as equally put off by their ignorance as I have been by his. However, what I do think is that our current president, #43, has never been the right person for the office he was sworn into because, frankly, he does not have the God-given mental capacity to best fulfill his duties. He does not even have the capacity to want to learn how.

For some reason, President Bush just doesn't get it. Nothing seems like that much of a big deal to him. He is the Whatever president. In fact, I suspect that's what the W. really stands for. After all, according to most accounts, G.W.B. wanted to be the commissioner of baseball. That was his dream. He didn't want to be president. Those who have really been running his administration wanted the poor sucker to be "president". And we know who those oily folks are, don't we? And we know why, don't we? Even his parents were stunned by the turn of events. They thought it'd be their prized Jeb who'd follow in George H.W.'s footsteps, not slaphappy, good time W. who, with his propensity of mooning people and flipping them the bird, nursed a keg of beer until he was forty.

The thing is, despite his tragic presidency, I predict that, someday, George W. Bush will be the commissioner of baseball. And I think he'll be very good at it. It suits him. For that job, yes, he has what it takes. For the job of president of the United States of America? Well, this time we finally (and thankfully) chose the best candidate. No, not the black man with a dream...the smart American with a brain.

Where Credit Is and Isn't Due

I remember when there was a time when you could only drive a Mercedes if you had money. Luxury cars were precisely that, a luxury. These days, it seems, any self-delusional image climber with 15 cents and a dual airbag inflated ego can drive a Mercedes. We are a "look-at-me" society, more concerned with the facade than the foundation. We are adept at "frontin'', if you will. We are brokety broke and yet, we charge and lease away the days like there will be no tomorrow, or, at least, not one we will ever accept any fiscal responsibility for.

Bailout? Takeover? Buyout? Merger?

I've seen people on TV talking about how they should teach money management classes in high school to better prepare students for their financial futures. Good idea. Still, the basics are what seemed to trip us up. We learned how to add and subtract in the first grade, didn't we? They called the class Math, if I recall. I believe the standard questions were along the lines of: If the apple costs 80 cents and you have 50 cents, can you afford the apple? No, right? Right. So, you can't have the apple, right? Right. Because you don't have enough money, right? Right.

And yet, the basic rules and lessons have grown loopholes. Question: What if you put the 80 cent apple on your credit card? Well, then, you still can't afford it, right? Right. And yet, you can have it, right? Right. You can eat it, right? Right. And right now, right? You can eat it right now, right? Right. Enjoy it in the moment and worry about it later...when later, that 80 cent apple winds up costing you $17.00 because of the interest rates, and the fact that you can barely cover your minimum payment due each month. Rotten to the core. Yummy. Why stop with one apple? Get two. Three. A bushel! Get a bushel of apples.

The profound greed that percolated on Wall Street, allowing mortgage and investment firms and credit companies to take advantage of the clueless many who managed to fool themselves into believing they weren't being fooled is sickening. And yet, as they sold and resold mortgages and charged astronomical fees wherever they could, licking their chops all the while, Main Street marched along to a beat it could not keep up with. Wall Street is guilty, yes, but so is Main Street. Imagists who, knowing they didn't really have the money to buy a house, still went after those too-good-to-be-true NINJA (no income, no job, or assets) mortgage loans just so they could own a house and, dare I suggest, show off to their equally fiscally doomed neighbors. What happened to having money and living well below your means? My mother always taught us this: If you can't afford something, you don't need it. She also said, like twenty years ago, that credit cards would destroy this country. To this day, my mother, a very successful businesswoman, doesn't have one credit card. She needed me to get her a cell phone because she couldn't get one with, you know, money.

This financial meltdown, I'm sorry to say, is a bright orange semaphore desperately directing us toward the real evil-doers...ourselves. We are to blame for our own mess. Look what we done did.

Car leases are what really amuse me. What the fark do you need to trade your car in for every three years? Oh, I know, because you're too high class and important to drive the same car for more than three years. Or, at least, that's what you'd have others believe about you. Allow me to tell you about my car. My car has been my car since 1995, when my parents finally bought it for me after I had spent three years driving a ten year old Pontiac with one windshield wiper, a dragging muffler, and a hole in the radiator. I managed to hold the windshield wiper's rubber inlay in place with a yellow scrunchie, and, frankly, I just got used to the noise, smoke, and smell my vehicle produced on a daily basis until it exploded on Route 4 one afternoon. Anyway, this December, I will have had my car for thirteen years. And, I will continue to drive it until it falls apart all around and under me and I have to Flintstone footwork it to get it to move. When that day comes (I figure I have another year or two, at least) I will buy myself a car with the cash I have saved. Leasing means losing, so no leasing for me, thank you. Then, I will drive that new energy-efficient car for, God willing, another 12 to 15 years. In case you are wondering, both my degrees are in Literature.

Personally, I know what I have and don't have. And I know what I can and cannot afford. I make many a sacrifice in my everyday life (most notably with regard to my living situation) just to make sure I'm not putting myself at a terrible disadvantage. In a hole. While I may not independently be rolling in the dough, I am not in debt like many of my peers. And I have been told that I am in possession of enviable credit. Am I fly? Do I sparkle when I walk? Am I money? No. Not at all. Most people would not look at me and think, wow. I mean, why would they? Haven't we already established just how lousy most people in this country are with the whole credit thing?

Word Up

Everlast, not to be confused with the boxing gear, nor with the alternative rock group Everclear, is one guy, the former lead guy from the all-white 90's hip hop group House of Pain ("Jump Around") who has since resurfaced a few times and gone on to enjoy a respectable level of solo success. He is, perhaps, best known as a solo artist for his socially conscious "hick hop" track, "What It's Like", that married old school beats with an acoustic guitar. At the time (1998, I think it was) this was hardly chartered territory. Still, Everlast, with a surprisingly melodic, yet husky singing voice, triumphantly jumped back onto the music scene having found his creative niche. With an altered perspective on life and death, which came courtesy of his having survived a heart attack at the age 28, Everlast was a new man who had something to say, but nothing to prove.

A flawed, but earnest and interesting salt-of-the-earth kind of artist, Everlast seems most at home when he is documenting the grimy underside of the celebrated facade of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. His penchant for telling the stories of the often dismissed folk who suffer through their lives with soiled souls, broken hearts, and dirty veins, earns him points in the "keepin' it real" books of many a music critic and fan alike. I almost don't even mind the fact that he sings about being "uncurable" in a straight-faced, non-ironic way on one track off his latest CD release, Love, War and the Ghost of Whitey Ford.

Clearly, when it comes to expressing what they mean to say, writers, well, songwriters, specifically, have their favorite, tried-and-true words and topics from which they choose. They effortlessly reach into their rusty toolboxes and don't, generally, make any apologies for what they pull out. They gravitate toward certain themes and communicate their thoughts and feelings in ways that tend to be comparable to the ways they conduct their lives, the ways they notice others conducting their lives, the ways they wish they could conduct their lives or, on a far less integrity-driven note, the ways in which they merely want to be perceived by their audiences. On occasion, they create something we'd call art. Sonically speaking, I think Everlast's latest solo effort, Love, War & the Ghost of Whitey Ford is a brand new & interesting stretch of lonely road, and yet, the lyrical content suggests the same old scenery. Empathetic as ever, Everlast does not have a heart problem. Not at all, actually. No, what Everlast has is an art problem.

When crisp, dramatic horns introduce the opening track, "Kill the Emperor", it is difficult not to let your goose bumps dictate your opinion of the song overall. First, you envision the royal court. Then Washington, D.C. presents itself. The pomp and circumstance that could only highlight the disconnect between the rich and the poor, the enfranchised and the disenfranchised in our modern American times is evoked instantly. And then the emperor's assassin enters, trying to flex his political muscle via a stale decree that is intended to kill, but doesn't. Save for the "fifty states of denial" line, nothing that follows the horns is especially groundbreaking or even remotely poetic. Plus, the figurative notion of "killing the emperor" is as old and dusty as monarchies themselves. Tired. Snooze. Wake me when it's over.

And yet, stripped of its narration, the music of L,W&tGoWF is remarkably alive and impressive. It really is. Needless to say, the SOUND here is king, as it stimulates in an unpredictable, mixed bag fashion that, at its best, inspires smiles and bursts of movement. It successfully rocks and hops and picks and strums and, kudos to production all around, seamlessly. However, where the music seems studied and precise, the off-the-top-of-the-head lyric writing seems to have finally run its course. This is where Everlast (i.e. Whitey Ford) may need to invest in a notebook and start physically writing words and concepts down on the page. Writers write differently when they put pen to paper. If a songwriter is going to be bold enough to experiment with instrumentation and "beats", s/he needs to do the same on the lyrical/subject matter front and open up to the possibility of telling different stories. Or, at the very least, the same stories, just framed with more of a creative edge and enthusiasm.

Now, I know there have been reviews out there praising the lyrical content of L,W&tGoWF, but, alas, upon further inspection you'll notice that those reviews, themselves, are poorly written. Just an observation, of course. Anyway, I don't think anyone will revoke Everlast's Biggie Smalls/Jay-Z writing-without-writing-anything-down lyricist's pass for daring to challenge himself for the sake of his craft. Pen and paper are not just for autograph signing, after all. Perhaps they might afford Whitey the opportunity to withdraw from a WORD BANK that does not only include the following words:

junkie/hell/whore/girl/broken/tired/pain/devil/city/jones/heaven/

heart/angel/drinking/pills/knees/God/dirty/scars/die/love/live/

poor/bones/rich/high/low/lies/gun/kill.

I mean, it can't hurt to try. After all, a singular, personal truth can be communicated through an assortment of different channels and still be true in the end.

Don't get me wrong; I think this is a very good CD, but there are moments on L,W&tGoWF that suggest that it could have been a great one. A really great one. A classic, even. The track "Die in Yer Arms", for example, sparkles from every direction and in every light. With a wink and a nod to an 80's dance floor, this track proves to be a perfect, little, "vicious sway" of a song because it is fun, light, infectious, and witty. A grape metaphor done justice: juicy, but tightly wrapped. The verses are not long, self-indulgent attempts at trying to communicate something meaningful without quite getting there. The message arrives immediately and, dare I say, artistically.

Another highlight is the track "Friend". I don't care how many scars, or broken hearts, or I-fuck-up-a-lot-but-love-me-anyway-girl references are made on this song; I love it in spite of itself. In spite of myself. The words (including the non-word "uncurable") and the overall confession of sorts are not what make this song fresh; it's the angle and the sincerity here that make this song worth my looking like a complete junkie for when I sing my scarred and broken heart out when I play the hell out of it while driving my tired bones into the dirty city.

Loosen Up On Buttons

I bought a great fitted sweater the other day. Correction: I bought what I thought was a great fitted sweater the other day, until I wore it out in the world and made the mistake of shrugging my shoulders in it. You see, the stretch knit of which I speak, happens to be adorned with two large buttons that, when I'm at rest, sit flat and parallel to one another on my mid-section, just below my chest. However, when I lift my shoulders ever so slightly, voilà, the buttons shift upward in a flash and, suddenly, my breasts look like they have been bedazzled with shiny, black, industrial strength nipples.

I have never understood designers' fascination with buttons as fashion. I had a pair of cherry red corduroy pants as a kid that had three buttons (flower petals) on each back pocket. The designer might have thought these buttons served a great aesthetic purpose, but, honestly, the only purpose served was that of making my butt cheeks into musical instruments, as they tap tap tapped out a tune every time I sat down in my chair. Then, whenever I moved, it was like the remix. I cannot forget feeling those buttons pressing into my flesh during a mandatory assembly where I had to suffer through sitting "Indian-style" on the gymnasium floor until my rear end became a button punching bag, and my feet (for their having been sat upon for two hours) lost all sensation. At the end of that assembly, as I pulled myself along the waxed wood floors of the gymnasium with arm strength alone, I looked like a seal...in cherry red corduroy pants.

Buttons have a really undeserved sweet reputation in our culture. They seem quaint. With their perfect little holes, they look like little round faces. Of course, no one ever says that about bowling balls, and they, too, have those holey faces. Cute as a button? Yes. Cute as a bowling ball? Not so much. Buttons seem delicate. Button noses, not baton noses, are heralded as the beauty ideal. Just ask the plastic surgeons. Button your lip sounds so much daintier and so much more polite than shut your hole, or quit flapping your gums, or put a sock in it.

I can understand buttons as fasteners; that I get and mostly appreciate. It's the decorative buttons that cause me to pause and shake my head while shopping. Using buttons in place of eyes on children's clothing is just weird to me. I saw a yellow sweatshirt in the kids' department at Macy's not too long ago that proudly boasted an alligator with blue button eyes on its front. It was the ugliest thing. I felt so sorry for any child whose mother might buy it, thinking it was adorable because it happened to be in the children's department at Macy's. Why can't manufacturers just stitch on the damn eyes the same way they stitch on the rest of the damn alligator? That way when children's alligator sweatshirts lose buttons, their mothers won't have to send their children to school wearing crippled alligators across their chests. Quick, sew a toothpick onto that sucker! Your blind bastard of an alligator needs a walking stick. Using buttons as wheels on knitted trucks is equally strange to me. How is this clever? Don't kids have it tough enough nowadays? Must we also force them to wear lousy arts and crafts projects?

Listen to me closely, okay? Buttons are not as benign as they seem to be. Chip one or break one in half. Go on. I dare you. Why so reluctant? Aha! You, it seems, know what I know. Yes, you know that if you do chip a button or break one in half, you will suddenly have a rather ninja-like weapon in your possession. I don't care what you say. No broken plastic anything is as sharp and as deadly as the itsy bitsy cutesy wootsy broken button from hell. Just ask that other cute button you know and love...your belly button. Clearly the victim of button on button crime, mine still winces when I put on a pair of tight-ish pants. "No, Sandra, please," my belly button's muffled cries seem to say. "Elastic waistband! Elastic waistband!"

Anyway, this is where I press the POWER button OFF and leave you with my musings. My scissors, after all, have a date with the threads that bind my shiny, black button nipples to my otherwise great fitted sweater.

If He Had a Hammer

Would you like to be reminded of your elementary school days? Then, please, by all means, make it a point to visit any neighborhood drugstore (CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid), or Staples between the dates of September 5th and September 12th of any given year. However, if you are an adult child of immigrants, you want to take this trip down memory lane around the Fort Lee, NJ area. You see, this is the best area around back to school time because this is the new immigration hub, where many new immigrants and their families seem to put down roots for a few years. This is where they choose to sorta kinda assimilate because of the area's close proximity to the city, and the school systems that are nowhere near those of the city in terms of shear administrative incompetence.

Anyway, the truth is, there is nothing that brings an adult child of immigrants back to his/her childhood like listening to a brand new crop of parents with accents. As they argue with their children in the crowded aisles over all the frivolous and flighty requests the teachers have put on their school supplies lists, you'll feel like a kid again. WHAT YOU'LL NEED FOR CLASS is emblazoned on many a ditto being clasped in the hands of none too thrilled mothers. "I tink," growls one heavily accented Russian mother in Staples, as she runs down the list with her bubblegum nail, "vat yous need for cless is a meeeellionaire moder to pay for all this tings."

I can remember getting into an argument with my own mother over the Glue Stick that was on my brother's school supplies list when he was in the second or third grade. "All glue sticks, Jesus Christ. What the hell is the difference?" she'd asked, annoyed, as I dug the old school Elmer's glue out of the red CVS basket she was carrying, and replaced it with the required Glue Stick. "Troppa comodità with you kids; that's the problem in this country." In case you're wondering, that basically translates as, too much comfort. According to my mother, America was and is going down the proverbial tubes because, God forbid kids should do a little extra work and spend a little less money in the process.

Surely, there are more problems than that one in this country, yes. But, my mother is what I call an absolutist. For her, there is one solution to all your problems, and if you really stopped to think for a minute, Jesus Christ, you'd see that there is only one real problem in your imagined collection of problems. What is your problem? Laziness. And what is the solution? Go to work.

When I tell my own students (who, incidentally, pretty much all have parents from foreign lands) stories about how I grew up with immigrants for parents, they immediately relate and, subsequently, relax. They need not worry if they get a different kind of notebook for class, or if their parents fill the forms out incorrectly. I get it. I was there. In many respects, I'm still there. Growing up American is a different experience when your parents no speak the English no so good. It is especially different when the old world culture and traditions are not immediately checked at the gate. For example, most of my students still get hit by their parents when they do something wrong. There are no "time outs" for them...yet. We swap stories about the injustices we've suffered in homes where a smack is not viewed as a criminal offense, and, honestly, we mostly laugh at the ignorance our parents have displayed from time to time in the discipline arena. We all know the hitting thing doesn't dissuade bad behavior. We all know that getting hit sometimes hurts and often humiliates, and that, when we have our own kids, we won't continue the cycle. In some cases, nearly twenty-five years apart, our stories are strikingly similar. Thus, we understand each other, the adult child of immigrants and the children children of immigrants. We can appreciate and laugh at each other's stories because they are the same stories...just with different accents attached.

That said, when I tell my properly American friends a story of being chased around the house by my father with a hammer when I was a kid, they are aghast. They are too horrified to even think of laughing. They shake their heads and give me that look. That look that says, Oh my God! Poor you, Sandra. You sad sad clown. Then, within seconds, I find myself recanting, because they didn't get it. They don't get it. How could they, really? And I don't want them to pity me, or, for that matter, think ill of how I was raised and the people who raised me. They don't see the humor. So, I start again. Only this time I sound like a rattling train of excuses.

Um, well, you know, he didn't actually USE the hammer. And, um, you know, it wasn't a GIANT hammer or anything like that. It wasn't like a SLEDGEHAMMER. You know what? Now that I think about it, it wasn't a hammer at all, actually. It was, you know, one of those hammer thingy things that you, um, use to play a plastic rainbow xylophone. A toy. You know, a mallet. And it wasn't even hard plastic or anything like that. No, it was like, you know, a stuffed animal mallet, so it was soft, you know. It was really really soft. Oh my God. What the hell am I talking about? It wasn't a mallet at all. You know what it was? It was a teddy bear. Yeah. I don't know how I mixed that up. It was a soft, fluffy teddy bear with a red, satin ribbon tied around its neck. And, oh yeah, I remember now. He wasn't chasing me with it because he wanted to hit me with it. He was chasing me with it because it was a gift he had surprised me with. Because he loved me that much. He was always doing stuff like that. Chasing me around with teddy bear presents after I tried to push my brother down the stairs. But, honestly, even if he had been chasing me around with a hammer, which, of course, he wasn't, I would have deserved to have been chased with a hammer because, you know what my problem is? Laziness. And you know what I need to do? I need to go to work.

Don't Count Your Chicks Before They Hatch

Females are not interchangeable. Any man who has encountered more than one woman in his lifetime should probably be able to figure this out. I didn’t think I’d have to say this in the year 2008 but, newsflash, female candidates are not interchangeable either. What, because Hillary Clinton had a very good shot at being elected the first female president of the United States, and female voters supported her campaign, those same female voters will lemmingly follow the next female candidate that is nudged into the spotlight, despite the fact that she is not qualified for the job she is up for? How presumptuous. What a blatant display of shameless pandering. Tsk tsk tsk.

I don't know about you but, I was more than a little offended when Senator John McCain unleashed a female running mate upon us, all the while thinking this would be all it would take to sway the onetime Hillary Clinton supporters in his direction. The political strategists, consultants, pundits, vice presidential search committee members all seem to think that we, women, are all the damn same and, therefore, will all vote the way we are guided (shepherded, really) to vote. They think that, just because a woman is on the ballot, other women will mindlessly vote for her even if she is, clearly, out of her bird. No, I say. This woman here is not that easily swayed. Don’t bother trying to “target” me with your research, polls, and statistics because, guess what? I move.

It seems that, over these past couple of days, this whole Republican vice presidential nomination of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska has gotten me thinking about the woman I am. This, of course, sent my mind wandering back to my girlhood. You see, as a kid, I used to be forced to go to my parents' restaurant to help out by answering the phones, working the register, making cappuccinos, and filling soda glasses with that soda gun that is, like most things, fun to toy with until you realize it isn't a toy, but actually, a tool for working. That said, there I was, essentially hidden behind the bar (no liquor license in those days) to do my various jobs that earned me, I swear to God, $9 total a night, for what worked out to be seven hours of labor. Still, I didn't mind being stationed back there, despite the insulting pay. I didn’t feel comfortable working the floor because that always required a surplus of BS-ing with customers, so, being behind that fort of a bar suited me just fine. I really couldn’t stand the BS. I mean, who were these people? And why did I have to tell them how I was doing in school?

Anyway, during my time served in the restaurant, my mother had this awful tendency of pawning young customers off on me, not caring if I actually wanted to chat with them, which, of course, I didn’t. I'd hear her as she talked to some random family, addressing the daughter with something like, "Oh, you're 12? My daughter is 12." Then I'd see her point in my direction with the smile she only wore when she looked at me in the presence of paying customers. "That's Sandra. You're both 12. Why don't you go talk to her?" My mother did this a lot. I’d cringe, yes, but ultimately, I would talk to them and make them laugh. I was absolutely polite. Some might even say dutiful; this was a business, after all.

So, often I'd be left to entertain a bunch of young, stranger girls who, because they were of, or about my age, were supposed to be just like me, at least, according to the adults in the vicinity. My mother thought that's all it took, our being 12-year-old girls, to make us instant friends. What she didn't seem to understand was that, unlike me, most 12-year-old girls were already little hoochie mamas with older boyfriends they let touch them "down there". Needless to say, I did not relate to, nor respect these sweet-looking girls who snuck cigarettes and convinced their parents they had a stomach flu when they were really hung over. At 12 years of age I didn't even drink root beer, never mind, beer beer (still don’t), and frankly, undressing my anatomically incorrect Ken doll embarrassed me so much, I just kept him in the same outfit for years. To me, it didn't matter if he and Barbie were at the beach, he was going to stay dressed as an astronaut.

That said, if you must know, while I am perfectly capable of exchanging pleasantries and being hospitable and charming for the sake of making those around me feel more comfortable, I've never fully understood the charade of it all. The phoniness, the Hi, how are you? It's so good to see you! lines of fiction always made me want vomit in my mouth a little when I didn’t care about the people I was forced to talk to. At the very least, I should have tacked my own list of Martin Lutheresque grievances on the door. The truth is, I do not genuinely want to speak to most people. The good thing is this: somewhere between the ages of 22 and 28, I completely stopped caring about whether or not it showed that I didn't like certain people. In other words, as an adult woman, if I don't like you, it will show. And if I do not want to engage in conversation with you, I won't, regardless of whether or not you expect me to. Regardless of whether or not it is good for business.

You see, while my family may still very much be in the restaurant business, I am not. I am my own person, after all. Therefore, you won't get my friendship just by ordering a pizza. Nor will you be entitled to my time and conversation just by being around my age. You have to earn all aspects of the woman I’ve grown up to be. Hence, if you think you’ll get my vote just by virtue of having been born a woman, think again. My vote has to be earned. Governor Palin and I are not the same, after all. She happily deals in BS, while I, happily, escaped it because I, unlike Governor Palin, am not a politician.

Oh, and, unlike Governor Palin, I won’t potentially be a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States of America any time soon. Thus, because of this, taking the time to learn about what this candidate stands for and what her policies are, as opposed to what kind of a woman she is and how she wears a ponytail, is crucial. It seems to me that when you dismiss individual female voters and clump them together as “the woman vote”, you’ll find, instead, an army, not a sorority, of informed voters who will likely be waving the Obama/Biden winning ticket. In other words, don't count your chicks before they hatch. Not that they were ever yours to begin with.

Attention Wal-Mart Snobbers

Drive for a mere hour and a half in New Jersey and you might encounter corn fields, or sheep and cows grazing, or a red pick-up truck with a not-so-fierce-looking hound hanging out the back. You might see a car show being held at some local, old-fashioned, drive-in burger joint. You might even stumble upon a Wal-Mart and be excited because, well, you've never been to a Wal-Mart. You've never even seen a Wal-Mart. As you suddenly spy a sly fox weaving its way in and out of parking spaces with its clever pointed steps, you might ask yourself if every Wal-Mart has a fox roaming around its parking lot in the middle of the day. Then, as you sneak past the fox, you might actually find yourself inside Wal-Mart, only to find that it is, in fact, like a giant, cluttered garage...before one might wisely decide to either throw everything away or, naturally, have a garage sale. Thus, you might be overwhelmingly disappointed with Wal-Mart.

Still, with a dizziness inspired by the very determined fluorescent lighting, you might stagger along the wide linoleum aisles in your three inch heels and oversized sunglasses wondering why every last sign in the store needs to be that awful shade of blue, and why you're the only person wearing all black. You might go on to survey the other shoppers and notice how nearly all the men are wearing shirts with their sleeves cut off. You might also notice how nearly all of their wives are wearing white or hot pink shorts that are way too tight. Finally, given the distinctive sound echoing from their feet, you might notice that, as they shop, the lot of them are slapping behind their gray carts in flip flops.

At this point you might be wondering how you look within the context of Wal-Mart, but you will not find one mirror on the walls of Wal-Mart. This might annoy you. You might even pout a little in front of the long stretch of shelves stocked with American flags. Then, as you wander into the children's section that is in all kinds of disarray, a Wal-Mart employee donning a rather unfortunate blue vest might come up to you and ask, in a gasping-for-breath kind of way, if you're finding everything you need. You might wonder about her rural spin on a New Jersey accent and think this woman needs to quit smoking, but you might say, thank you, yes, and then make a snide remark about the prosti-tot children's clothing for sale, as you hold up a size 6x push-up bra bikini top for her to witness. She might shake her head at the garment and agree with you about its scandalous nature. You might like her.

This Wal-Mart employee might be named Sheila, and, soon enough, she might start talking to you about how much her 8-year-old daughter's not-so-innocent taste in clothing has been costing her lately, both in terms of money, and in terms of her relationship with her daughter...because they fight all the time. Hearing this, you might lift your sunglasses off of your face and onto your head as Sheila might mindlessly start folding shirts, telling you about how hard the divorce has been on her daughter. "He just left," she might rurally wheeze of her former husband.

Then, as Sheila might be talking, you might (with your big black bag slung over your shoulder, and your big black sunglasses atop your head) start folding shirts, too. At first, you might not even notice you are folding shirts. And then, after some time, you and Sheila might both notice that all the shirts you are folding are either Hannah Montana, High School Musical, or Jonas Brothers shirts. So, Sheila might take this opportunity to tell you how absolutely sick of the Jonas Brothers she is. Then, as you smooth out the sleeves on one of the shirts, you might make a joke about how, even though you don't hate the Jonas Brothers music per se, you still can't seem to resist the urge to make a Jonas-Brothers-Kabob of them by searing each mini-man through his middle with an oversized knitting needle: Kevin-Joe-Nick.

At this, Sheila might laugh so hard that another Wal-Mart employee might come over to ask what was so funny. Sheila might repeat what you said and then both Wal-Mart employees dressed in their Smurfy vests might laugh. Then, as you fold your last High School Musical shirt and get ready to say goodbye, Sheila might reach out to you, put her hand on your shoulder and thank you for making her day. Likewise, you might say, as you exit and head back into the Wal-Mart parking lot, wholly expecting to find that clever fox, but only finding that not-so-fierce-looking hound hanging out the back of a red pick-up truck.