Why, Wal-Mart, Why?

Let me start by saying I hate Wal-Mart. Hate them. Most days I would rather take a beating than have to go to Wal-Mart. I hate it because, A, I will always spend too much money, and, B, someone or something will inevitably piss me off. So I don't go very often. But I really wanted the new AC/DC CD and it seems the old boys sold their souls to the devil (and not in the cool rock 'n' roll sort of way; it's the evil retail giant has me by the short and curlies sort of way) and the only place you can buy it is Wal-Mart, so I decided to go at lunchtime and pick it up. Guess what? I spent too much money and something pissed me off.

Instead of just heading straight for the electronics/entertainment department and picking up the CD like I should have, I got distracted and decided to stop in the clothing department and look for pants. I need new pants for work. Now shopping as a, ummmm, voloptuous (read: damn fat) woman is hard, and it's especially hard at this age. I'm not that old yet. I'm not ready for flower-covered house dresses or sweaters with quilted patchwork designs of geese wearing hats emboridered on them. And when I lost weight and actually became a size, instead of having to just buy the biggest thing I could find on the rack, I promised myself that I would never go back to wearing elastic waist pants with no zipper or button that I could pull all the way up to my chin. These, unfortunately, are what you're going to find the most of in any plus-size department you go to. Apparently the fashion world is convinced that fat chicks can only be housebound old ladies obsessed with hat-wearing web-footed creatures and pastel colored-flowers. No way could a fat chick actually be a still fairly young professoinal who would like to dress the part.

But I digress. Our Wal-Mart has recently been renovated and everything has been moved around. So I finally find the "Women's" department and bypass the flowers, geese and stretch pants, and head for a rack that contains some really cute office attire. As I'm hading to the rack, I start to think about how many months it's been since I actually paid my phone bill and wonder if I have another month before I get the pink notice, because obviously this little venture to Wal-Mart is going to cost me more than the originally estimated $11.99 for the AC/DC CD. I head straight for the blue pinstripe pants, because I really need something in blue, and pick them off the rack, only to discover that they are a size 8.

What? Size 8? I haven't been a size 8 since... well, I don't think I've ever been a size 8, not even when I was eight. So I look at the other pants and see a size 6, a size 10, 12, more 8's, a few more 12's, and it slowly dawns on me that this entire rack of clothing is not the plus-size motherload that I'd thought I'd found, but is just an evil reminder of the cute clothes all normal size women can wear while I am forever banished to the flowery geese with elastic waists section. Upon closer inspection, I see that there are also other racks of clothes in sizes in the single digits mixed among the fat chick stuff. So I take a deep cleansing breath--this is Wal-Mart after all--and search the racks that have clothes that will fit me and finally settle on a pair of pants that I can almost stand and a couple of tops.

I decide that while I'm there, I could use some new underwear. I may hate Wal-Mart, but they are the only place I can find that has hold in your tummy briefs that don't actually cut off your circulation or just push all the fat upward and make your belly hang over your waistband. So I head for the fat chick underwear section and what do I discover? You guessed it. The tummy holding in underwear is mixed among the skinny girl thongs and hoochy mama panties. Great. Just great. Wal-Mart, you never fail me. Now I have one more thing to add to my cotinually growing list of reasons to hate you.

Thank God the AC/DC CD only came in one size. Though you do have to pick from either a yellow, red or silver CD jacket. I got red.