Sam’s Club.
Despite my feelings toward his mother Wal-Mart that I shared without reserve last week, I’ve always found Sam to be a delightful fellow.
Big quantities, cheap prices, more locations than Costco, adorable little old ladies handing out samples…
Actually that last point is starting to change. Because my third to last visit brought me in contact with three different types of sample distribution methods:
1. A vending machine that requested I swipe my Sam’s card in exchange for it to spit out my sample into a receptacle with a complete lack of warmth and care,
2. A scowl-faced teenager sitting at the Pizza Sample Table who LIT-RALLY never looked up from his phone the entire time my children, with much analysis, picked out their many samples, and
3. The delightful vintage-Sam’s smiling old lady handing out peach samples – which were so good that we bought some – for which she thanked us profusely, because delightful old ladies are only paid commission. We ate two, then threw the rest away because they were complete mush and nothing like her samples. Two weeks later, we read all of the recall articles clearly implicating our Mush Peaches as being contaminated with Listeria.
I hope she enjoyed her trip to the bank compliments of our disease-ridden peach charity.
But that’s not the point of today’s post.
Today’s post is about the friendliness of other Sam’s shoppers. After all, we all paid to be there. We’re all in this together. We are, for sure, A CLUB.
Actually, friendliness might also not always be true. On my second to last visit, I was coming around a corner when an elderly shopper caned me.
No seriously – she had been carrying her four-pronged cane around in her jumbo-sized shopping cart and picked that exact second to remove her cane from its place of resting and swing it around her head like a cowboy wrangling cattle before setting it on the ground with the nice addition of a piece of my skull.
I was her cow that day.
But that’s not the point of today’s post, either.
Today’s post is about our very last visit to Sam’s Club – Thursday night.
Chris was going to quickly run in and get the two items he needed, but Noah had to pee and I always have to pee, so we drug Ali along with us and turned it into a family affair.
We bathroomed, we shopped, we avoided delightful old sample ladies handing out plagues like candy, and we paid for our purchases.
But Chris wanted to get a fountain drink, so after we paid, we hauled our purchases and our progeny over to the refreshment counter.
As they thought they had done their Sam’s duty, the children were restless, running circles around our legs and such.
The lady directly behind Chris caught a glimpse of Noah on one of his go-rounds.
She gasped.
“Ohhhh mah. Doesn’t he just have the purtiest eyes???”
Then Ali came around the corner of my right thigh.
“AND HERS TOO!!! Mah goodness. So lovely.”
She turned her attention to squinting at my eyes, as they always do. I gave my typical muttered response of, “Yes, they got all of the recessive genes – I’m not sure how.”
She replied, “Well maybe they got their Daddy’s eyes!”, and motioned to Chris, who had his back to us.
(As if I might have forgotten to consider him in the explanation of the genetic makeup of our children.)
“No, his eyes are just like mine. They got their Grandparent’s eyes, actually.”
“Oh, I see. Well, they’re just lovely.”
We paid, she paid, and we moved on.
As we were juggling our purchases at a table so that Chris could fill his drink, the lady that was behind the eye-noticing lady walked up to us.
She patted us both on the shoulders simultaneously and said,
“I tell you what. Y’all sure do look good to be grandparents.”
I laughed, thinking she was making a weird joke that I didn’t quite understand.
I choked, when I looked into her eyes and saw her genuineness.
I died on the inside, when I realized that THAT LADY ACTUALLY THOUGHT I COULD POSSIBLY BE A GRANDMOTHER.
OF A THREE AND SEVEN YEAR OLD.
Did Wal-Mart plant this lady here to pay me back for last week’s blog post? Or is Karma just actually that real and swift?
You win, Wal-Mart. You. Win.
I obsessively did the math in my head. Assuming I look like my age of 32, which is a generous assumption, apparently, I would have had to have been twelve and a half, and my daughter would have had to have been twelve and a half – at delivery, not conception – for me to be Ali’s grandmother.
Chris walked to the drink machine and our new friend followed him before I could share these figures with her because I had accidentally swallowed and digested my tongue.
She patted him again and said, “Aren’t grandchildren just tha best?! I’m a grandmother also. And I look purty good too, dontcha think?”
He smiled and agreed.
SMILED. AND AGREED.
Because yes.
Why not?
Sure.
Let’s play Grandparents.
Because that doesn’t at all make me feel like I need to buy every wrinkle cream in the western hemisphere.
Luckily, Sam’s Club has them all – in jumbo sizes.
This STILL makes me want to do a spit take. Beyond ridiculous!
my theory is that the old woman misunderstood your comment about your kids having their grandparents eyes…. and the old lady was thinking the whole time: “why would this nice young couple not want to say they where the parents of those beautiful kids?” But was humoring you anyway, as most sweet southern ladies would….
Your theory is very kind. I’ll go with it. :-)
Bless her heart.
I think she thought YOU said you and Chris were their grandparents. Like, she misunderstood your line about the kids getting their eye color from their grandparents. And really, she showed remarkable restraint for someone of her age in not saying something really inappropriate about how young your kids must’ve been to have had kids so young to make such young grandparents out of you. Ha!
Yes that’s exactly what happened. I wouldn’t call her response “restraint”, though.
Or maybe she was planted by Sam’s Club as a way to sell more 5-gallon jugs of wrinkle cream. She wanders the store, eavesdropping on conversations, always looking for an opening to offer a comment that will make a woman feel old. Boom, wrinkle cream sales go up.
AHA!! This is an extremely good theory.
When I was 17, me and a guy friend (not boyfriend, just a guy friend) were at McDonald’s with my two little sisters (ages 9 and 4) playing on the play place. Two people at separate times asked how old “my” kids were and complemented me on how pretty they were. I took it in stride and thanked them but he was a little miffed at being mistaken for my husband.
And that’s why you should never go to a McDonald’s Playplace. Among other millions of reasons.
I have been mistaken for my nephews grandma. It was bad I mean yes I am 38 but my sister is older than me. Plus I usually get mistaken for someone younger than I am so I was devastated then I laugh at it now. I am also the recessive gene in my family. The only one with blue eyes. I get it from my mom’s dad.
Ohhh nooooo. I think I would have done a spit take…in her face. *Accidentally* of course….
My husband and I were at a wedding a few years ago and seated by some old people, who thought I was my husband’s MOTHER! What?? We’re both 33!
That. IS SO WRONG.
That is too funny! I love how Chris just owned it.
When I was 13 I was in line with my then 3 year old brother at Disneyland. Some woman thought I was his mom. I was not an early developer either, I was tall, yes, but I looked like a string bean with bad teeth and no boobs. How this woman thought I was old enough to have a three year old child I will never know.
A similar thing happened to me last summer. I am 35 and have a 4 year old daughter. We were running late one morning and had stopped for a super nutritious breakfast of chocolate covered donuts from the gas station. The check out lady (who I assume was in her 50s) looked right at me and asked how old my granddaughter was. I smiled politely and said, “my daughter is 3.” She blushed and neither of us said another word while finishing the transaction.