Sam Walton and My Dad

My dad despises Sam Walton. Some would say he despised Sam Walton since Sam Walton has been dead for  a few years, but my dad's utter abhorrence for some of Sam Walton's  business practices (in particular, underpaying employees and driving out small businesses)  is immortal.   I know other people who aren't crazy about such things, and even a few people who boycott Walmart, but I don't think anyone feels as strongly about it as my dad does. He has multiple T-shirts, which he actually wears in public,  with anti-Walmart sentiments. Once we went to dinner at my grandparents' house, and when my dad found out that they had purchased most of the food they served us at a Walmart (they probably did it on purpose; they know how much my dad hates Walmart; everyone who knows my dad knows how much he hates Walmart), he wouldn't eat  the meal.  I shudder  to think of what might have happened if they had told him they bought their toilet paper at WalMart.

Several years ago my mom, my  brother, and I were driving with my mom's sister totally in the sticks in  Oklahoma for some reason that I can't quite recall when we came to a sign that said, "Birthplace of Sam Walton."  We stopped, and my aunt took a picture of my mom, my brother, and me posed right in front of the infamous Sam Walton  sign. My aunt had the picture made into Christmas cards and sent them to my dad as a favor. He threw them en masse into our fireplace.

I've never been inside a Walmart.  If someone took a picture of me when I went inside a Walmart and showed it to my dad, I would probably be disinherited, not that my parents own anything  anyone would want to inherit.

I don't have a copy of the actual picture with my mom, my brother, and myself in front of the sign. No one  bothered to keep a copy. 

A Menace to the Common Good

My uncle has recently begun referring to me as the menace to the common good. In my current brain-injured and drug-induced stupor, I don't exactly know what that means. Even were I not  drug-induced and brain-injured, I doubt I would know what he meant by it. I don't suppose it really matters, anyway. If it gives him comfort to say that, by all means he should say it.

One thing just occurred to me that I don't think I've ever shared on my blog, which is that I am not allowed to shop at Walmart, nor is my brother. My parents choose not to shop there. My father has some deep-seated animosity toward Sam Walton. He says his blood pressure rises dangerously each time he hears the man's name. My suspicion is that this is a whole load of nonsense. For one thing, on public service announcements, high blood pressure is referred to as 'The Silent Killer" because it kills people with no symptoms or warning signs. So how is it that my father happens to be the one person on the face of the Earth who has no need of a sphygmomanometer because he can miraculously tell when his blood pressure rises? It sounds just a bit convenient to me.

Anyway, I've decided that as soon as I'm paroled from this hospital, I will go to Walmart. I won't buy anything there, because I'm not trying to be defiant or impudent. I just want to see the place so I'll know what it is I'm avoiding.

Speaking of blood pressure, a nurse is here to check mine. I was hooked up to automatic monitors until about an hour ago. Now the peasants have to come and check my vital signs manually.

I will be back to spout more brain-concussed nonsense at a time to be determined later.