So last Saturday Dr. Sanchez and I were headed out for a night on the town. We were going to catch a movie and maybe some Wendy�s, whatever. But first Dr. Sanchez needed to stop at Wal-Mart.

�I�ll just be a minute,� he assured me. �I just need batteries for my CD player.�

I smiled, remembered that this would be a perfect opportunity to recharge my handy Wal-Mart phone card at six cents a minute, and tried to ignore the part where he just lied to me and we headed off on what I knew going in would turn into yet another Wal-Mart adventure.

You see, there�s a hard-and-fast rule that any trip to Wal-Mart cannot be completed in under an hour, which has a lot to do with the company�s brilliant marketing scheme. Everything from the too-happy old guy with stickers at the door to the put-upon, hard-to-find cashier in electronics to the stupid annoying happy face logo emblazoned on every single price in the store (which, by the way, tends to be festooned with some sort of seasonal hat I�m sure must be a royal pain to change out for every fake holiday and who really heard of a St. Swithen�s day hat anyway?) is designed to get you to thwart you from your mission and buy every stupid little thing you see on your way to get a little thingy of batteries.

Okay, so we walk in the door and pass the perky senior citizen, who deems us too old for stickers (although it�s probably safe to assume that he just doesn�t have stickers, because I like to go in the exit since it helps me avoid at least a little bit of the blatant marketing, but I usually end up going out the other door when I leave anyway, which defeats the purpose, but we�ll get to that later, so in the end, we can�t blame the old guy), but too young to be called �sir,� so he defaults to, �Welcome to Wal-Mart! Enjoy your stay,� and I wait for him to hand me a room key and some extra towels in case I decide I want to go to the pool later, but then I remember that this is just plain Wal-Mart, not the Wal-Mart Astoria Hotel, and we press on.

I turn to Dr. Sanchez. �You get batteries. I�ll be over in electronics.� I scamper off before the good doctor can point out that we�re standing right in front of the stupid battery display.

Upon arriving in the electronics area, I notice that there is a new crop of bargain basement CDs for my perusal. The benefit of the discount CD bin is twofold: 1) It�s a CD for, like, $6 and 2) I could find an extremely rare CD that I�ve trekked all over hell and back trying to find, and if I ever learned (and ignore the obvious logic hole and assume the Wal-Mart fairy, in smiley-face ghost form, would track me down to let me know this) that I was in a Wal-Mart that also happened to contain the renegade CD, that I and the CD were in the same Wal-Mart at the same time and I didn�t take the CD home with me, I�d have to double my dosage of certain prescription depression medications and call my lawyers over at Beckman, Beckman, Clark & Powell to update my will to include that my entire life savings, upon my untimely death, be allocated for the location and purchase of the exact CD (not another one just like it, but the exact CD) that shared the Wal-Mart with me so many Saturdays ago. So anyway, I didn�t find anything exciting in the cheap CD bin, so I moved on to my new love, DVDs. And by this time, of course, Dr. Sanchez has caught up with me once again.

�So I got my batteries,� he says.

�Great,� I mumble as I read the back of The Borrower.

�So we can go now,� he says.

�Uh huh,� I offer.

He grabs the box and asks �What are you reading? The Borrower? Ew!�

�I know, but � �

�Rae Dawn Chong?�

I look around to make sure no one�s watching and then hang my head in shame. �Yes.�

�All right, I think it�s time to go,� he says and starts to physically drag me away from electronics.

�No!� I cry. �No! Look, it�s Mulholland Drive. Mulholland Drive! You love that movie! Dr. Sanchez, it�s not fair,� and just as I�m about to pitch a level-five hissyfit in the aisle of Wal-Mart, I see it.
And keep me away from the toys.

�Look, Dr. Sanchez! Barrel of Monkeys!�

So we spend the next forty-five minutes in the toy section, shaking a box of K�Nex, reminiscing about the Slip-n-Slide we made out of an old tarp we found in the ravine behind the house, playing �Mary Had a Little Lamb� on the little children�s piano, and lamenting our loss of the innocence of youth. By the time we get to the board games, though, we snap out of it and Dr. Sanchez starts lobbying to leave again.

Then I remember that Wal-Mart has the absolute best cookies, so we decide the fastest way through to the grocery section is going through the back of the store. We walk past pillows and camo stuff and children�s clothing and hardwood floor cleaning solution, through the sea of mentally unstable shoppers trying their best to retain their sanity and at least a percentage of their children, both at the same time, past the McDonald�s that has okay fries but doesn�t do the fries the way I like them so me and Dr. Sanchez don�t eat there anymore, and to the grocery section.

Of course, we�re in the very back of the store grocery section, where the bread and milk are kept, so as to distract the one-track minds of bare bones grocery shoppers from their intended goal by putting the bare essentials way in the back, at the end of a three-hour hike through the miscellany of other food products so that by the time you actually get to the bread and milk, the cart is so loaded up with cereal and frozen dinners and chocolate frosting and the requisite four boxes of wine (Dr. Sanchez: �When one is not enough, and two just will not do, the only way to go is four boxes of wine.�) that there is absolutely no room for bread and milk, so the weary shopper gives up and leaves the store with everything (up to and including the kitchen sink) but the two things they came for.

Not that we need bread and milk, but it�s nice to have a general idea of where it�s at in case we�re ever inclined to be severely gouged on bread and milk, which I don�t see happening anytime in the near or distant future, but anyway, it�s there. So we move on and comparison-shop the pizza rolls. I enlist the help of the good doctor in my decision. �Should I get two bags of the pepperoni, or two bags of the cheese, or a bag of each, or two bags of the ones that are a mix of cheese and pepperoni, or maybe we shouldn�t get pizza rolls at all. What about Hot Pockets?�

And Dr. Sanchez takes me by the shoulders and looks me straight in the eyes and says, �Seriously. You. Need. Therapy,� and tosses two bags of the mixed pizza rolls into the cart we procured from an unknown source. We make quick work of the chips aisle, opting for the tortilla chips and the salsa with the black lid, because �it�s the good kind� according to the Doc. As we keep the gravy train moving, I mention that Sam Walton probably didn�t have this kind of wild, obsessive marketing orgy in mind when he started Wal-Mart and that if we resurrected him from his grave and brought him to one of these newfangled stores, he�d retreat to his grave and impale himself on the skewer, climb back on the rotisserie, and get a lifetime supply of hamsters to run in the little wheel and generate the energy necessary to keep him turn, turn, turning well into the next millennium. Dr. Sanchez points out that we�re standing really, really close to the cookies, which distracts me from my ranting and the cookie debate begins.

I�ll spare you the gory details and just tell you that we decided on the two one-dozen packages of �fresh-baked� cookies for $5 and moved on to the checkout lines.

Which is to say we walked all the way back to McDonald�s before we found the end of the line and then we had to deal with the smell of fries and I start to wander over there when Dr. Sanchez pulls me aside and says, �Dude. Remember the last time we ate here?� and I was going to do my best to avoid the whole food poisoning incident (which may or may not have something to do with the birds that fly with impudence through the McDonald�s area), but I concede the point while acknowledging that if we did go to Mickey D�s, we�d eventually just have to get back in line, and the whole process would start all over again. Dr. Sanchez decides that next time, we should bring a third person, and have the third person get in line upon our arrival at the store, so that by the time we�re finally done shopping, the wait for the checkout line will be less than an hour. I make a mental note.

Two hours and an inexplicable industrial-sized box of laundry detergent later, we arrived in the parking lot. Realizing that the night is pretty much over and we�ve missed the last showing of the movie we wanted to see, we settle for the drive-up window at Wendy�s before I remember.

�Crap! Crappity crap crap sonofagoddamn bitch! Crap!�

�What? What did you forget?�

�The phone card! The phooooone card!�

�Okay, we�ll recharge the phone card and that�s. It. No candy, no charcoal for the grill, just the phone card. And then we�ll go. It won�t be that bad. We�ll be in and out in less than ten minutes. Come on, we can do this.�

�I want my mommy,� I say and we head back into Wal-Mart.