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First, a bit of background: I had just put up our backyard canopy and helped Andy uncover the pool. I was in sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt tattered with holes. In the midst of our endeavors, I noticed that the soaker house, on its last lack-of-legs for the past two years, was finally beyond repair or use. I jumped in the car to get the 250 feet of black rubber, dusting off the detritus of leaves and dead branches that clung to my outfit. I figured I’d run in and out of Wal-Mart without anyone being the wiser.

As I pulled into the parking lot and jumped out of the car, I immediately fell into walking behind a co-worker from my office. I hung back a bit, but I was ready to say, “I won’t tell what you’re wearing if you won’t tell what I’m wearing,” because this woman, normally not the savviest dresser anyway, was in an enormous hoodie that went down to her knees. Being in my own glass house, I kept the stones to myself and for the good fortune of both of us she never turned around.

I found the five soaker hoses (50 feet each) with relative ease. Cagey like a ninja, I piled them up and brought them to the line at the register without being seen by anyone I knew. Of course, there were no ‘10 items or less’ lines open, so I waited in what looked like the shortest line, with just two people in front of me. Then I saw her. I saw her hair first, then noticed the lethargic manner she was scanning the items and remembered her from the last time I was in Wal-Mart. I also felt the familiar impatience/rage creep up on me in what was supposed to be a quick and stealthy mission. It took a good ten minutes before she rang out the two people in front of me. And they didn’t have that much. But as a wise woman once said, you end it quicker when you’re nice.  I mustered a smile from the deepest and darkest depths of my soul. I said hello. And silently I prayed that it would go smoothly.

It didn’t.

The hoses – there were, as I mentioned, just five of them – were about eight dollars a piece. I had figured somewhere over $40 was where the bill should land, and I inserted my credit card. The total came to about $45 and I thought we were good.

“Now wait,” she said. “How many did you want?”

“Just the five,” I said, my forced smile quickly beginning to fade.

She scanned another hose for no reason and the total changed.

“How many did you have?” she asked again.

I spoke a little louder, “FIVE.”

Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that this person had the educational background that would encompass counting to five. Even if she hadn’t, there were five clearly discernible objects sitting right of her for guidance. And two functional hands with all their digits intact.

She tried another time and ended up with seven items somehow scanned in. She voided it out and scanned them yet again.

“Ok,” she said, “How many do we have?”

Me: “Still five.”

She counted them again. Scanned them in again. And somehow left one off. The total came down to about $34 now. She said that’s what I owed. I knew it was wrong, but I said nothing and paid it. All stringent morality aside, if you were in my shoes (sneakers, still stained with dirty winter pool water) you would have done the same thing, if only to get the hell out of the store where the growing line was up to seven or eight people wondering what on earth was going on with this rattily-dressed guy and all these hoses. 

I stuffed the receipt in my pocket and headed to the door, where I was met by a big cheery man who asked to see my receipt. Annoyed, and already forgetting that I hadn’t been charged for all the items I held, I awkwardly balanced the hoses in one hand while fishing the receipt out with the other. He looked (or didn’t look) at the receipt and told me to have a good night, smiling the entire time.

Perhaps they should eliminate all the difficulty and just install shoplifting guides in every aisle.