Out in the Parking Lot

i deeply dislike wal-marts. we use them for their well lit, well cleaned bathrooms, but i try to spend as little time in them as possible. they seem like cultural wastelands piled to their impersonally high ceilings with nicknacks that range from slightly to profoundly useless. employees man the wide automatically opening doors with blue vests stamped with the seemingly friendly slogan, “how may we help you?” how may we watch you shop lifting?

my sour feeling toward mock authority stems from last nights encounter with another wal-marts parking lot security patrolman who felt the need to harass us intermittently while we had our rv parked. apparently “rving” because according to this man, rv is a verb, was prohibited in that parking lot and regardless of the fact that we explained to him on multiple occasions that we were only doing to be there a few hours to rest and catch a movie he felt it reasonable to question our motives.

and it wasnt that we were rude to him… to start with. i smiled when he told us the rules and said we wouldn’t be there over night. i smiled when i walked over to his truck with obnoxious flashing yellow lights to ask him if it was ok to stay there while we caught a movie at the cinema-plex across the way. i didnt even become rude when he gave me the stone faced look of a man who reveled in his place of power and told me we had to move the rv to the curb side of the the lot so we wouldnt impede other shoppers driving. his point was that our trailer stuck out about 3 feet into the road space between parking stalls. i laughed a bit at this and in an obvious attempt to show me he meant business he stared at me like a drill sergeant might stare at a soldier in training. that was the breaking point for me.

everytime he would drive be from that point on i would wave condescendingly at him with a big smile and a wink. we took pictures of him and as we walked back from watching the longest yard, and gave him the double finger point like “hey tiger!” i dont know why these little things give me such pleasure. but when you really have no recourse against being wronged, the only available actions sometimes take on childish heir. sometime after that he informed us that we had ten minutes to leave before he called in reinforcements because he thought we had lied about seeing a movie. he stood outside the camper out of my sight from the loft above the drivers seat and i called to him “would you like to see the movie stub?” knowing that would catch him off guard as he assumed he was correct, and he said “no, i don’t want to see it.” the surely nature of his reply made me laugh and i knew that i had won this stupid game.

i flipped him off as we left and felt satisfied with myself. have i grown as a human being from that experience? no, but i wont pretend that im above pettiness. we all slept in till around noon today and now we are sitting here eating and deciding where we are to go next since we don’t really have much to do till around 8 or so.

apparently the ugliness of the people we have seen here has not been lost of my companions. of course we take our sample from wal-mart parking lots so it’s had to say thats representative of what oregon really has to offer. all for now. its guitar time.