Shopping With My Sweetie - Lost in Walmart

Lost in Walmart

Dear Meghan,

Since you'll be incommunicado all weekend and we could hardly hear each other on the phone, I thought I'd tell you this story before I forget it. We went shopping yesterday. It was social security check day for everybody, so Walmart was packed. We got lucky and I got a mobility cart for Mom. We'd already walked to the Ross store and then to Panda Express and then over to Walmart so she was fading fast. We put our folding camp chairs in the basket. 

Walmart has taken away the outside benches during CoVid and never put them back, so we take our own chairs to wait for the return bus. We also loaded the bag from Ross, and Mom's purse in there. This info is important to the story. Mom took off in the electric cart and I waited around to see if anyone dropped off another cart on their way out. My knees have had it so when I can get off them it helps. My left knee has a big dent in it where the cartilage has worn away and left it bone on bone. I now understand why Grandpa used to walk the way he did. I walk like that now. Anyway nobody gave up a cart, so I took off with the shopping basket full of stuff looking for your Mom.

The woman can disappear faster than a Navy SEAL in full camo in the middle of a jungle. I searched for her for quite a while, bought some clearance sale chrysanthemums and scanned the retail horizon before me. No sign of my Sweet Baboo. Then I got a bright idea. I'd call her phone and get her to tell me where she was. To my surprise and relief, when I called, I heard her the distinctive sound of her phone ringing somewhere up ahead of me. 

So off I went trying to find the source of the sound. She wasn't answering her phone so I figured I'd follow the ringing. I have her set up with an old-fashioned telephone ring so it's quite loud and easily to identify. Still, I couldn't quite track down the source of the ringing. It seemed to move here and there ahead of me. When the phone went to voice mail, I called again. The ringing sounded really close by so I took off again in pursuit. This time it sounded like she was in the cleaning supplies (not surprising), so I hurried on hoping to catch her. She still wasn't answering her phone. Again the phone went to voicemail and stopped ringing. I called again from the sour cream and yogurt section. This time it sounded like the ringing of her phone was coming from behind the back wall. 

 I circled back found those double swinging employee doors going back into the stock room. I opened it a little and it sounded like she was back there somewhere. So I turned my cart around and parked it by the door. I rang her phone again. This time the ringing had moved off, to the left again sounding like it was moving but now moving behind the back wall of the store. I hurried to follow, hoping she'd pop out somewhere. Finally, I came to the shoe section. "Aha!" I said, knowing she'd been looking at shoes earlier. I reached the end of the back aisle and turned left onto the sneakers aisle. Again the ring tone seemed move quickly cutting across my path coming out from behind the wall. moving behind the display shelves ahead and settled on a new course somewhere up ahead somewhere. By chance, as I accelerated to catch up with her, I glanced down into the basket and stopped.

My eye caught sight of a brown bag with MAMA written on it in big letters. A sudden awareness began to dawn on me. This was Sheila's handbag there in the front of my basket. And what would be in her handbag? Wallet, hand sanitizer, hairbrush, perfume, her medications, and..............................................................oh nuts! Her phone! 

I'd been frantically following the sound of her phone ringing at me from the front of my shopping cart trying to keep up with a phantom wife. I'm getting too old to keep up with a shopping wife. So, I went to the Subway at the front of the store, bought a drink and sat down to wait. Sure enough, in about twenty minutes, I heard my name being paged to come to the fitting room to meet my wife. I stumbled back across the store to find my sweetie perusing the clearance rack. We managed to escape Walmart once we joined forces and got out for just under $200. She says she's going to quit going shopping because she spends too much money. I'm not helping much. She shops by picking up things, trundling around for a while and then putting it back on the shelf because she thinks she's spending too much. 

Earlier she'd put back some shoes and some lavender hand lotion. Coming along behind her, I picked up the discarded items and carried them along with me on the side where she couldn't see them to the checkout stand. While the cashier was ringing up her stuff, I slipped the shoes and lavender lotion onto the counter while she was looking for something in her purse. I can't stand for her to not get what she wants. Us guys are like that. Our wives put up with so much from us, we jump at any opportunity to spoil them just a bit. We guys have no idea how to get in her head and just know what she needs or wants. So, if we see that she wants something, we jump on it. Notice that women and men express love in different ways. Women read your mind and do things for their men before they ask. It is their highest form of love. Sheila buys stuff for me that I didn't know I needed. 

Men on the other hand, express love by deed - I'll climb the highest mountain, fight tigers, cross blazing deserts and raging rivers. Our expressions of love are things we can do that we know how to do. We're lousy at guessing what women want. We don't read minds. Tell us and we're on the job. It's the nature of men and women. Men do goal directed stuff. Women build nests and social circles. Men are outwardly focused against the threats from the world against their wives and families. Women are inwardly focused, trying to make everyone in the circle, if not, happy, at least safe, alive and breathing. So guys like me follow our wives' handbags around Walmart, rescuing shopping discards and trying to figure out how to make them feel special. I'm going to go ice down my knees now. She's taking a nap. All is well in our little world.

(c) 2024 by Tom King

In Search of a Peach Along the Broken Road

Sheila and I singing with Jack Allen at the nursing home
before God smacked me upside the head...

.

I'm a mess tonight. I know my Sweet Baboo is coming home from Louisiana, but I'm worrying anyway and will till I get her home. Except for a quick trip home, she's been gone for three months. I lent her to someone who needed her and they nearly broke her. The song below really hits me in the heart. When I was a teenage kid, I just knew that my heart was out there wandering around looking for me too. I used to sit in the top of trees and wonder where she was and what she was doing and why I couldn't find her. And boy howdy did I ever walk that proverbial broken road. I used to sing that John Denver song, "She Done Stomped on my Heart" a lot and I sang it with feeling let me tell you.

Pastor Mike Hansen forced his way into my VGA dorm room after one of my old girlfriends broke up with me and sat me down and told me this. "Tom," he said, "God has someone who is your match. He's already picked her out and if you'll just let Him, He's going to send you a real peach." Pastor Mike was absolutely right. 

Unfortunately,I'm kind of a bull in a China shop relationship wise and girls were terrifying to me. There was even a rumor floating around the Girls Dorm at SWAU that I was, you know, "Not the marrying kind," and not in a good way. Truth was I was scared of them.

Sheila actually had to ask me to sit with her on the bus to Bible Camp where we eventually got together. She asked me mainly because she wanted someone to play guitar with and I was too chicken to suggest it. She had no evil designs on me. It was really cool not to have any expectations - just two friends making music. We'd already been playing on Sabbath afternoons at the local nursing home where we worked. So we had 8 months of guitar playing together already. So it was just a friendly invite and completely unthreatening for Mr. Chicken. I'd never met a girl like her before. No games. No manipulation. Just says whatever she thinks. I loved that.

In fact, like me, she'd just gone through a breakup only hers was with a fiancee. She was looking for company. We even got invited to sing one of her songs together at one of the meetings. I think God was hinting, but I was still too dim to get it. We talked a lot that weekend. We'd both been hurt pretty badly and we wound up feeling sorry for each other which actually helped.

Even then, by the time the weekend was over, we were on the bus going home and still wondering if we should get back with our exes. Turns out God had other plans. We experienced the moment differently. To me it felt like God had smacked me on the back of the head and said, "Pay attention, boy. This one right here beside you is the one. I love this girl and I'm giving you the job of taking care of her. Got that?" All that went' clearly through my mind.

Sheila meanwhile was seeing visions of she and I and our kids and our family like a sort of vision. We impulsively grabbed each others' hands and have been hanging on to each other for dear life ever since.

And she's coming back home to me on Sunday!

God is very good to me, even when He's whacking me upside the head to get my attention.

© 2016 by Tom King

Forty Two Years and Counting

Every day I get a friend request on Facebook from one or two narcissistic females who post nothing but selfies on their home page. Are these girls really so desperate for compliments that they are willing to post photos that objectify themselves? It's kind of sad. Most are pleasant enough looking girls, but is that all they've got? Is there no brain back there with ideas and dreams and passions (and I don't mean long walks on the beach and cuddling by the fire)?

Have some self-respect girls. Any man worth his salt isn't interested in a girl he can use. He is looking for a woman who is his match in every way; one who challenges him, inspires him and who cares enough about him that she takes the trouble to "get" him in a way that no one else does.

That's how you get to your 42nd anniversary like my Sweet Baboo and I did today. You find someone real who uses her brain for something besides filler for a big hollow thing to which she attaches hair extensions, applies colorful paints and hangs big dangly earrings.

And to the woman for whom I would give my life, "Happy Anniversary, my darling." I look forward to millions more.

Love always and forever,

Tom

© 2016

The “Twilight” Myth

(c) 2013 by Tom King

The “Twilight” movies have been a huge hit with girls especially teenage girls ages 12 to 65.  There is an old and disturbing reason the "Twilight" movies are such a hit with teen girls.  They trade upon an old mythology that is just as flawed as it was all those millennia ago in the Garden of Eden.

The myth goes roughly like this.  All a bad boy needs to become a good man is the love of a good woman.  In “Twilight”, Edward is the ultimate bad boy – a vampire who lives by killing and draining the blood from human beings.  Now Edward has modified his behavior somewhat by only living on animal blood, but he still has the cravings. So you can tell he wants to be good, if he can only find a good woman to love who will save him.

Then, along comes a long-necked, pale young thing named Bella, who understands the bad boy, Edward.  She wins his heart and changes him forever. Edward becomes good, a terrible struggle ensues and everyone is saved and lives happily ever after. The only thing is, he bites Bella and she becomes a vampire too.  There's a moral there if you're looking for one.

The belief that bad boys will inevitably be saved because of the love of a girl has led more young women into terrible relationships than any other flawed belief about love (including the one about how love is a feeling). In 99 times out of 99 times, bad boys don’t reform because they love good girls.  Most bad boys (and bad girls for that matter) are bad because they choose to be bad.  All these kinds of unbalanced relationships do is use up the good girl and then cast her aside – usually with two or three kids to raise and an ex who ducks his child support payments. And women cling to their fatal attraction to these good/bad boys to a surprisingly advanced age.  I once had a 65 year old woman tell me she knew my father.  Now Dad was a notorious local bad boy.  My Mom married him because my Grandmother set them up, thinking that the love of a good girl would change his sinful ways. It didn't. He ran off with another woman when I was five after spending several of my toddler years in prison. This older lady, who remembered Dad as a teenager, a good church-goer and pillar of the community, told me (to my considerable discomfort) what a good looking boy he was. I swear she still had a lustful look in her eye and it was nearly 45 years later. It was more than a little creepy.

Unless bad boys and girls choose to change before they hook up with you, they aren't likely to do so afterwards. It's the ultimate narcissism to think that your naughty boyfriend or girlfriend will every change for you.

Change of the sort that makes good people out of bad people comes only from God and from the free will choice of the person doing the changing.  Any other reason for changing is doomed to failure.  Believing a loved one will change himself for you simply because the sex is really good sets you up for a big disappointment, because, it may surprise you to learn, you are not God. Expecting a bad spouse to change because they love you is like setting yourself up as God.  You expect behavioral change from your worshipper, the afore-mentioned bad spouse, because they love you and if they love you, you reason, they will want to do your will and change themselves into a form that is pleasing to you.

In the Garden of Eden, the devil promised Eve that she and Adam would become like gods. Lucifer lied.  I’m sure when Adam took the fruit, he too thought he could “save” Eve by joining her in her transgression. Ironically, it seems it was actually Adam who started the whole “I can save her/him through my love” mythos.  Women just took the idea and ran with it; possibly because there seem to be more really bad men than there are bad women for some reason.

And don’t write me an angry comment telling me it worked for you.  If true it would be an exception, that in its rarity, just proves the rule.  If you’re already stuck in one of those relationships, should you cut bait and run for it?  I’m not saying that at all.  I’m just saying that your loved one will never change for you. He may change because, through you, he meets God, but meeting God is the only way real change is gonna happen.  

My advice – start praying.  Never stop. It’s your only hope.

Tom King