I don’t avoid Wal-Mart for all the trendy reasons. A speech given by a middle-aged cashier, sporting a pewter-gray, pixie haircut, to a visitor from “up north” who had attempted to sympathize with her plight, convinced me that Wal-Mart may not be the Anti-Christ, after all. She was “eternally grateful” for her job, and gave “thanks to God every day”. Watching her speak, I found it difficult to pair that particular hairstyle with a tailored suit in which she would be expected to greet the boutique customers in carefully modulated tones. She had made the right choice.

I avoid Wal-Mart because I simply don’t have the patience required to shuffle behind mothers too tired to walk, and their children, who string out on either side of the shopping cart as though preparing for an impromptu game of Red Rover. I’m also put off by crowds in front of the shelves that force me to vie for a spot, by maneuvering my cart so that it serves as a barrier, while I make a quick strike, all the while hoping that the items I’ve already chosen will still be in my basket when I get back.   The whole experience is just too stressful for me.

Sometimes though, when you decide that shopping with company is preferable to shopping alone, you end up a passenger in your friend’s car, leaving you little or no control over which stores you park in front of. This would be how I ended up in the Wal-Mart parking lot. And I remained in the parking lot, while my friend went inside. He insists that there are some things no one else carries, and is sure that he is getting a better deal. We’ve had the conversation. I don’t belabor the point. Instead, I declare, gaily, that I will wait outside while he “runs in” to “pick up a couple of things”. This is how we saw the woman with magenta hair.

“Isn’t she a little old to be wearing that color?”, the question came from my son whose involvement with his Itouch had forced him to remain behind with me.

She was a small woman. And from a distance her size and shape, covered as it was in jeans and a tee-shirt, might have suggested youth. Up close though, my first unbidden thought was, “What was she thinking?”.   There was no mistaking the color of her hair. It wasn’t even trying to pretend to be red, and it was far to dark to be considered pink. It was a color you don’t see every day. It was magenta.

The lines in her face grew deeper as she neared the car, and when her light-colored eyes met mine, I turned away. I wondered if she was the victim of a color change gone awry. Perhaps, she’d been challenged. Maybe she’d won a bet. And then I noticed her carriage; the arch of her neck, the strength in her step, and I knew. The magenta hair was no accident, it was a statement, and I thought “You go girl!”.

 The grocery store I frequent boasts four self-checkout lanes. Today there was a queue. The fifteen-items-or-less lane also had several people waiting on line, but fewer, prompting me to steer my cart, carrying twenty pounds of puppy food, in that direction.

While waiting, I watched the woman in front of me place her items on the conveyor belt. It was an incongruous mix; coconut cake and a cupful of peeled grapefruit sections sat side-by-side.

In front of her, a stylishly dressed, carefully dyed young woman balanced on five-inch heels while pressing her Iphone to her ear, unaware of the surreptitious ogling husband in front of her, or his wife’s eyes as they followed his.

The woman in front of me was huge; a fact that was made all the more prevalent by her choice of a gauzy, aqua top that flowed immensely with her every movement. It was a well-made garment. I’m sure she paid plenty for it. I imagined her shopping, maybe even online. She had good jewelry.

Did she look at herself in the mirror?, I wondered. Did she try on the blouse, and then turn, this way and that? Did she smile with satisfaction at the picture she made? That was when I noticed how thin her forearms were behind delicate hands bearing a bejeweled wedding set. Someone appreciated her…

I left the store behind a young, dark-skinned girl who wore shorts and a shirt over her Chuck Taylor’s. It was her head, though that caught my eye.

Greens and yellows melded with cream, in a patterned fabric she had wound round and round her head to a height of nearly one foot in the style of a traditional African head-wrap. I was struck, at first, by the dichotomy. But that was before practicality kicked in, and I imagined my own shoulder-length mane wrapped, instead of clipped, on a sultry southern day. I think that girl might be on to something…

On the way home, traffic slowed in the opposite lane. I looked ahead, anticipating flashing blue lights, and was met, instead, by a rather large, middle-aged man dwarfing a moped.

At first, I marveled at his whimsy. Everyone knows how slow those things go, and here we were, in the middle of rush hour!   But his helmeted head remained upright, steadfast, fixed on a goal. And he rode…oblivious.

Given the state of traffic at the time, he probably got there just as fast as anyone else.

Tolerance is a window to the other side, and we have much to learn…

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