A little cowboy wisdom

Real life is better than fiction . . .

Christmas 2021

I avoid shopping at all holidays, especially Christmas. It’s artificially created to spend money to feed capitalism. Shopping is equal to visiting a fire breathing dragon, after crossing a bridge guarded by an army of trolls. There is something wrong with a holiday who picks mascots like Santa and Jesus but faces off with the Great Pumpkin, Wicked Witch and Ghosts in the shopping isles.

The possibility of my getting a felony for venturing out and about is high. Listen I’ll fight for a 75% off Monday like a champion. I will bowl over an old lady with a walker like a champion bowler. If bargain shopping was an Olympic event, I would take gold.

However, on this unfortunate day, I had to go. I live in a small town with limited shopping options. So I headed over to my local Walmart. Sometimes you must take one for the team.

I knew shampoo, hair care, medical needs are right by the holiday stuff. My game plan was stick to the left, avoid the rows of holiday supplies. I had one danger item – bird seed. You see, it is on the side isle vertical to the evil pit of ribbons, wrappings, bows, blinking lights. All the essentials for holiday cheer.

My plan was perfect. I hung a sharp left down the hair care isle. Followed by a right, grab shampoo / condition. Proceeding straight forward, crossing the main customer isle, grab the bird seed on my left, not stopping til I could make a fast right at sporting goods, to cross to the grocery side of the store.

It was a perfect plan and I meant to execute it with the split-second precision of a cat burglar stealing the crown jewels. I had this. Until I ran straight into a twinkly 5-foot-tall shinny plastic candy cane on sale for whopping $5! My bargain alert sound off quicker than Captain Kirk could call a red alert.

So now I am stuffing this gaudy thing into my shopping cart. It was 90% off and I would be damned if the other 3 women were going to beat me to my glorious prize. This bad boy was mine, no matter how I got it to the self-checkout.

I put it in the cart standing up. I tried cross ways. All the while keeping my hands touching it, because I had gathered a small group of people watching me, in the hopes I would give up and leave it for them to fight over. When if by some magic snow, here walked a innocent curtesy clerk! Coming short of felony assault, I cornered the young man while holding my plastic prize.

I managed to bribe him to taking the Christmas miracle to the checkout stand and to stay with it until I got there. Little did he know, I intended for him to carry to the car too. I figured I was safer that way. The crowd of envious holiday shoppers was starting to look a bit scary. I hurried to grab a few more items and meet him in 5 mins at the front of the store. True to his word his was standing right where he said he would be. I figured I owed the blow-up Mary and Joseph manger scenes a deep prayer of thanks.

I paid for my items quickly. Again, Christmas magic must have been with me because everything scanned and correctly. Took my card too. For this Walmart and their self-check registers this could only be considered is a notch below the virgin birth of Christ.

As I gathered and bagged my few items, watching the young man with my shopping treasure, I didn’t happen to see a young man dressed in cowboy boots and fine-looking cowboy hat standing inches from me. He was standing a startling nose to red stripe at my treasure. I looked down to this young cowpoke, staring intently at the candy cane.

He turned his head a little right then a little left and asked me “what I was going to do with it”

I replied, “well give to some little girls who live way out of town so Santa can find their house”. Truth be told I had no idea what I was going to do with it. In fact, I realized I didn’t need the damn thing in the first place.

He put his hands on his hips, nodded his probably 7-year-old head, and told me “That’s probably a damn good idea!” And he walked out into the lightly snowy day. Leaving me and courtesy clerk tongue tied staring at each other in amazement.

No words seemed necessary, so I picked up my bag, the clerk hoisted the gaudy decoration up and we too headed out into the snowy day. Somehow our lives seemed a bit lighter and brighter thanks to the cheap decoration and the wisdom of a young Montana cowboy.