Adventures in Being Complicated in Wal-Mart

My life can be particularly complicated, like when I am trying to give birth in Wal-Mart or in a barn with no medical or adult supervision and either a small child or a large baby monkey keeps throwing bananas at me.

My water broke in Wal-Mart. Yes, the birthing water stuff, not the bottled water stuff.  I have popped a water bottle in Wal-Mart.  Two different spills.


It began in the back of the store, in Sporting Goods.  I knew that I was having a boy, so I was just a little eager to buy him a football.  When my water broke, I didn't know what was happening, so I nonchalantly walked from department to department hiding in the aisles.  I had "wet pants syndrome."  


I singlehandedly turned the entire store into a lake.  Ducks and everything.

The store employees actually would not let me leave. I think they were afraid I would flood my town and cause mass chaos.  I was held hostage.  I think they also wanted my baby because he was going to be awesome.  You know what it feels like after you have been wading around in the swamp all day and you just want dry, warm clothing while not standing around in Wal-Mart? Yeah, I felt like that.

Facebook wasn't around then or I would have gotten ALL of the "likes" that day.   Yep, they were as good as mine.  I feel old now just thinking that Mark Zuckerberg was probably in Kindergarden at the time.  He was busy drawing thumbs.

Now, he is old enough to go to Wal-Mart himself.

I worked as a radio personality at a radio station before I had my son.  I had to be funny on air whether I was funny or not.  There was no time to think.  Being funny is an art, like dancing, except there is no music (ever), no choreography and no combination of me ever shall be a comedian.  My handle was "Foxy T."


Besides the fact that my last name was "Fox" at the time, I was very foxy, but mostly my last name was "Fox." When I am nervous, my comedy skills come out, like skunks and possums do at night, only with my comedy the mange and rabies are usually not involved. 


I always thought that comedy would be my ticket out of the flophouse.  It wasn't.  

So, there I stood trapped in Wal-Mart...battered, wet and million-dollarless hiding in the women's bathroom because the people greeter was blocking the door.  I had only one prayer.

I actually had a different vision about where my baby's birth was to take place.

I don't always hit a homerun with comedy and I am OK with that.  There have even been times where I have walked into a room, tried to be funny and the room became completely bereft of laughter.  


I had sucked any and all life sources even remotely related to happiness or laughter out of the room.  


Crickets didn't even bother chirping.  I can't swear by it, but I think a mouse shot me the finger once.  Not a good finger.  The bad one. 


At least I try and if I fail, I try again.  I know people who won't even post on Facebook because they are afraid that their "friends" will laugh at them.  Well, either they aren't really your "friends" or you are afraid to try.  Maybe both.


If I had lived in medieval France they would probably have had one of those people reading a scroll to me. A scroll reader person.

I can't say that my shopping trip that day rekindled my lifelong love affair of laying on a wet bathroom floor, though. 

It's not nearly as fun as you think it would be.  I did have the capacity to be like a normal person and get to the hospital when my water broke instead of being in a Mexican Standoff in the bathroom of Wal-Mart with the Wal-Mart employees.  


As I lay on the floor and no one around me was laughing, I knew then, that this was serious. 


Even the spiders crawling around on the floor were unusually well-behaved.

I metaphorically began to make a "deal with the devil."  By "devil," I mean the manager and by "metaphorically" I mean I sat there and cried like a baby and begged and pleaded for them to let me go.  Finally, they got a hold of someone who would come and pick me up.  I had to leave my car there.


Life doesn't always seem to go into the direction I would like it to go into, but I had my beautiful baby boy.  I know that he is here just to replace me.  Out with the old and in with the new.  


And I'm OK with that, too.  Things do get better. 


I am in this continual state of remote disbelief that the supply of well-behaved parents was exhausted and Someone made a bet on me that I would do a good job as a parent.  

I admit that my comedy skills and my parenting skills can always be called into question, but the fact that my son is an amazing person and I am the luckiest person on the face of this Earth never will be.


My son never did play football.