Went with a friend so she could pick up her prescriptions at Sam's Club.
What was printed on the wall of the store were big, black letters, quoting Helen Walton, Sam's wife.
I usually don't gasp without provocation from my COPD, but the words on the wall were absolutely stunning. Until that moment, I had never triple-gasped. It was, to me, an olympic event.
Store security cameras have undoubtedly preserved my moment of WTF in all of it's glory. It sees me standing there looking up at the sign and having the identical parameters on my puss, as given the proverbial deer in the headlights.
Then, I started to chuckle. That turned into an hysterical vocal hog wallop, causing an immediate need for my nebulizer.
Impossible that any customer eyes within the store didn't focus on me. I was so flummoxed, I felt I was seeing myself from the sign itself and it was Dali surreal in its intensity.
Images in my mind began to flood in and make me feel despair and contempt. I envisioned evil spawn sucking up anything with a denomination printed on it, as it left a trail of plucked humanity in their wake.
Then an image of Silas Marner holding the leash of the evil spawn swamped my synapses and he drooled in ecstasy at the flow of green, while his eyes flashed with every clink of a coin on the teeth of the evil spawn.
Of course the employees continued their drone activities as required to keep their meager days pittance. Guess they've seen the sign too. Most likely too damn many times. I'd feel pretty dronish too, having to swallow those words every working moment and knowing it was hypocracy gone mad.
So, I finally began to edge back to the reality of the moment and said only to myself, Holy crap..
Oh, yeah. Here's those immortal words of total, gut-wrenching, cluelessness and I quote:
Giving Back Where Our Associates Live, Work and Play.
It's not what you gather in life, but what you scatter in life,
that tells the kind of life you've lived
and the kind of person you are. Helen Walton
My friend had obtained her purchase and found me standing there looking up. I pointed to the sign. Under my breath I said, "What you sowed was greed and scattered it among yourselves, Helen."
As my friend and I were leaving, we heard the loudspeaker announcement, "Clean up under Helen's quotation. Yeah, again."