The Fall of Man

Well I just have to tell you about another Wal-Mart event. Yesterday the Warden told me to pick up some stuff while I was in town. I went through that same old scenario of circling around like a buzzard trying to find someplace to park within a half mile. But I was lucky this time, I found one just a few hundred yards away!! (I should have bought a lottery ticket being that lucky.) I go walking in the front door, grab me a cart and get ready to start hunting.

That’s when it happened. There’s this elderly gentleman leaning on his cart just inside the shopping area shaking his head back and forth.

Being concerned, I ask “Sir, are you alright?”

“Son, this world is coming to naught!” He responded rather matter-of-factly.

“What do you mean?” was my quizzical reply.

With a wave of his arm indicating the whole store, “Look at that! Look how far man has fallen!”

Somewhat perplexed, I asked for clarification, “you mean the size of the store? The amount of stuff in it? We are just getting to greedy?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. Look yonder at that guy standing in the ladies lingerie section with a list in his hand” he said as he pointed. “No doubt his wife has written down a certain size and brand for him to pick up and he can’t find it. Back in my younger years men were men and would NEVER have come to town to buy the wife’s underwear!”

“Look around you! Men every where, pushing carts with list in hand” he continued. “Women are trying to rule the world”.

It was then I noticed that there were indeed a very large number of men holding their list and pushing half-filled carts from place to place. They were reading, selecting, re-reading, re-selecting and then pushing the cart to the next item on the list.

Then he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me close so I could look down his arm as he pointed. “Over there” he went on, “that guy in the women’s hygiene section. Now that has to be embarrassing!” And I agreed remembering a few red-faced times spent in that department also. “All sorts of sizes, shapes and brands. And if he don’t buy the right one, she’ll send the poor guy back to EXCHANGE it!”

“Son”, he continued in somewhat a militant voice, “when women started burning their bras back in the 60’s, men should have took heart and stayed men! We should have put them back in the kitchen! We are letting this get totally out of hand.”

“I remember how it was back then”, he stated in a voice similar to George S. Patton to his troops before the Sicilian invasion, “Men didn’t go to town and shop for the wife. He stayed home and hunted or fished or watched football!”

Well, I must admit, he is beginning to get me worked into being a part of his revolution to over throw women’s rule. I’m nodding my head and agreeing that men do indeed need to take back their rights.

Just at that time, another man walks by pushing his cart full of food with three kids in tow. “See what I mean? Even that has changed! No man in my younger life would have done the shopping AND watch the kids on a Saturday!”

I am really buying into his new radical movement when he gives a heavy sigh, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a list. “Well I reckon I had best get the little woman’s stuff” and begins ambling down the isle towards the ladies lingerie with his cart.

With my militant thoughts of overthrowing another dictatorship now dashed, I too reach into my pocket, pull out my list and head for the feminine hygiene section.

Dennis