Column: Savagemama

Oh, the Places You’ll Go For Baby … Including Wal-Mart

By Jennifer Savage, 5-31-07

A few weeks ago I did something I haven’t done in so long I’m not sure when I did it last. I went to Wal-Mart. I still can’t believe it.

At a friend’s house Eliza cackled when I pushed her in their outdoor baby swing. Plastic and hanging from a tree the swing looked sweet and Eliza looked sweet in it. She laughed every time she got close to me and I grabbed her feet, which made her laugh even harder.

“We need one of these, I thought. She loves it. It’s spring. Every little baby girl needs a swing.”

So I started looking for one. I looked at all of the other big box stores in town with no luck. I looked online and realized that I didn’t want to wait three weeks to get the swing nor did I want to pay to have it shipped.

Then one day I was having lunch with a friend on a beautiful Missoula day. We were sitting outside and another friend who has a daughter about six weeks younger than Eliza walked by on her lunch hour. She said she’d just gotten her daughter the same swing.

“Where?” I said. “I can’t find one anywhere.”

She joined her thumbs and stuck her index fingers in the air forming a “W.”

“You’re going to have to go to the evil W,” she said. “I looked everywhere too. But Wal-Mart is the only place in town that has them. Red and blue plastic, yellow cords? Yep, Wal-Mart.”

I wasn’t sure I could do it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m too good to shop at Wal-Mart but it gives me the creeps. I used to go there all the time as kid – I grew up in the South, everybody shops at Wal-Mart—but somewhere along the way I caught, as my grandmother says, liberalism and can’t seem to take the flag-waving, America-is-better-by-God-or-I’ll-kick-your-ass ra-ra that seems to be at the very core of Wal-mart. And it bugs me that Wal-Mart runs the little guy out of town and that they pay their workers poorly and work them just enough so that they don’t qualify for full-time benefits. (Not to mention that all of humanity is at Wal-Mart at any given time and I don’t care for crowds.) I know it may sound idealistic but I’d just rather not contribute to their evil ways.

Normally. That is until Eliza lights up at a plastic swing and the only place in town to get one is Wal-Mart. 

So with Eliza on my hip I walked across the expansive parking lot on a hot day a few weeks ago. As the doors opened wide for us I saw before me a sea of stuff. Stuff I didn’t want or need. I looked above for signs to lead me to some section of the store that might have baby swings. I weaved through women’s clothes, socks and underwear and emerged on the baby aisle. Car seats, clothes, sippy cups, wipes, cribs – no outdoor swing. I reentered the forest of women’s blouses, pants, skirts and sleepwear and came out on the other side near toys. I saw plastic shovels and buckets, plastic swimming pools – getting close – swimmies that kids wear on their arms that make them look like a WWF wrestler, plastic noodles for the pools and, finally, red and blue plastic swings with yellow cords. I snagged one and walked to the nearest cash register as fast as I could.

I felt a little dirty going to Wal-Mart. All the years of avoiding it made it even worse to go that day. I felt sad for the people that work there, nostalgic for all those sweltering summer days in the South when my mother and I found refuge in our local Walmart, and I felt more than a little hypocritical.

Is the line between my values and my wants really so thin? Can I loathe Wal-Mart and then the minute I really want something that can only be found there, toss my ideals to the curb, give in and go there? Or is it simply that I would do anything to hear Eliza laugh the way she does on that swing? Even go to Wal-Mart.

Who knows. I’m still trying to sort this one out. But in the mean time, the swing we bought that day for $19.88 (everything ends in .88 at Walmart) is hanging in our backyard and Eliza couldn’t be happier with it.

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