A Trip to Kmart

This past Thursday found me sitting in a place known as The Institute, wherein Mormons of the college variety gather for their stuff and such and so forth. I had nothing to do, as none of my classes at SBCC have homework due for like, three weeks. I was sitting there, and had Facebook open. I was, clearly, doing nothing at all.  Cue the entrance of Marvin, one of the others that can frequently be found at the Institute. He needed to go buy a few things, like a monitor and a space heater, and thus asked if I could drive him to the Kmart that was about three miles (give or take) away. I, knowing that I would be considered a total jerk for eternity if I denied him this ride (as I said, I was clearly doing nothing), agreed. Seconds later, we were on our way to Kmart. We pulled into the parking lot and were approached by a blue car. For a second, we thought it was passing us, but then it became clear that whoever was in the car wanted something to do with us.

At this point, I began to fear for our lives… This woman was clearly about to pull some drive by shooting stunt and we were going to be left to bleed out in the parking lot while the bored employees in the parking lot’s SALE! tent continued on their shifts, somehow oblivious to the shots being fired fifty yards away. They’d never know what was coming.

What actually happened, which is a lot less exciting, but pretty random nonetheless, was that the woman addressed us in a guttural voice. The kind you get when you’ve been packing down several cigarettes in the last little bit (meaning years). She was white with black hair, had several tattoos, and was pretty much your perfect image of a total druggie.

The conversation that followed involved her asking us to take something to the person working behind the Little Ceaser’s cart with the aforementioned Kmart. Marvin also hit on her like, twice, but that’s not important (though it is quite amusing.

The item in question that we were being asked to carry into the store was a bag full of…something. We figured it wasn’t polite to go through it right there in front of her. I was still a bit confused, but I figured that barring any explosives, this bag couldn’t possibly be full of anything that would be of any harm to anyone. No, I really didn’t linger on thoughts such as those for any significant amount of time, but the thought did flash through, more as something that I should say jokingly to Marvin after the woman had left, but I digress.

The woman also gave us two bucks for our services, which was cool I guess. That got me a candy bar, which is probably the best part of the whole story.

We entered the store and directly to our left was the cart that we were to deliver the bag to. I walked up to the pretty young woman that was manning it, who was probably around my age. The following conversation went something like this:

Me: “So uh, some woman outside…probably your mom, told us to bring this to you.

Girl: “….What?”

Marvin: “Yeah, this chick outside, she told us we should bring this bag of stuff to you.”

Me: “We kind of thought she might be your mom. I mean, she had the same…features…”

At this point, I’m incredibly glad that this young lady has no idea as to what the woman she is currently being compared to looks like.

Girl: “Um…so my mom lives in Wisconsin…”

Marvin and I: “…uuhhh…”

It was then decided that we should probably have a look inside the bag to see what kind of stuff we were delivering in the first place. We discovered shampoos, conditioners, a toothbrush, and (this is the weird part) an empty tub of Vaseline with brown residue on the inside walls. There was also a folded piece of paper, which we opened quite curiously.

Predictably, the paper had a note scrawled on it. Though it was written in very untidy sharpie handwriting, we were able to discern the message pretty well. It read something along the lines of:

“I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again. Voices are getting to my conscience. Money should cover it all.” There was also something that looked like a decaying, upside down pear, but I now realize that it must have been a heart.

Amidst Marvin trying to convince the girl to let him keep the twenty that we found in the note, and me trying to convince Marvin to drop it, the girl was able to make her escape…meaning she went and gave the bag to the manager.

I think Marvin was also trying to ask for this girl’s number too. I really just wanted to go home, so walked out, pulling him into my wake. I was given a brand new CD for my troubles upon dropping Marvin off at UCSB. Good times.

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