Happy Mom

Though the hair is not fixed, I could not bypass this shot of Mom, posing in her Wal-Mart go cart. She has just ravaged Wal-Mart, over about a 90 minute period, and her glee is palpable. She purchased everything from shoes to a DVD/VCR player. She drove her go cart like a drunk golfer drives a golf cart: full speed at all times. I let her go. She crashed a couple of times in the beginning, but then she mastered it like a pro.

Mom and I had a running, 30 minute disagreement about when we needed to leave Wal-Mart, and return to Anna. Mom refused to leave. In retrospect, the whole scene was like trying to get a child out of the pool. I played the part of the permissive, overwhelmed, helpless parent. Mom was the child who refused to depart the water.

Finally, Mom agreed to go, but then took off towards Garden Supplies, which was the opposite direction of the checkout lines. I figured she was looking for the checkout lines, and she didn't want to hear any more instruction from me. I waited for her to U-Turn, and return in my direction. Instead, she turned left by the garden hoses. I started walking the 30 yards distance towards garden hoses. I wasn't worried, b/c she was pinned in by the far end of the store. Nevertheless, she effectively ditched me! After a full search of Garden Supply, I enlisted a Wal-Mart associate to help, and we zoomed towards Auto Supply. No Nancy. It had been maybe five minutes - which is a long time, in that situation. I envisioned Mom exiting through a fire door, or falling off her cart while reaching for an item on a shelf.

The associate whisked me towards Customer Service, and then launched a storewide "Adam Alert" for: "70 year old female, driving a Wal-Mart motorized cart, blue sweater, gray sweatpants, eyeglasses, goes by 'Nancy'". The problem was, this exactly described about 20 customers then motoring around the Wal-Mart. Suddenly, I espied Mom, 30 yards distant, zooming towards Garden Supplies. I had to run, yelling her name, to catch up to that damn cart.

Mom had bananas in her basket, which means she traversed the entire width of the store, from Garden Supplies all the way across to Grocery, picked out bananas, bagged them, then began her return trip to find me. Finding me, she asked if I still needed to return some flip-flop sandals I had mentioned earlier. Luckily, I did not. More luckily, Mom was finally ready to acquiesce, and return to Anna. We checked out, go-carted to her Yukon, and took the picture at the top of this post.

Look at that picture again. I said she looks gleeful - and she does. But she also looks ... smug. She beat me. That is for certain.