rekkidblogga

Kmart... Yes, Kmart

My love for Kmart totally marks me as a child of the '70s but I don't care. The '70s were a great time to be a kid. There wasn't all the pressure there is today to look trendy and cool. We went to school in Keds and Hang Ten t-shirts and Levi's and nobody looked at us weird.

Anyway, today I notched this year's Kmart Summer Tour - two Kmarts in two suburbs in two hours. Some Martha Stewart bedsheets had caught my eye on kmart.com and since I'm never one to turn down new bedsheets (no pun intended), I hit the Big K trail and immediately realized that everyone else like me who'd been scared away from IKEA in the past month or so had slunk back to Kmart to take advantage of cheap yet stylish bedding, thanks be to Her Marthaness. Shackled under home arrest or not, Call Her Miss Stewart didn't disappoint; I left Kmart with two sets of bedsheets (two pillowcases, a sheet and a fitted sheet in each) for what I'd have paid for far less bedding at IKEA.

The real truth about why I still love Kmart after all these years? Because this happened while I was Desperately Seeking Sheets: I glanced down an aisle and just at the split second I did, this boy - probably nine or ten - went rocketing by in the opposite direction, riding like Speed Racer on a Kmart shopping cart before quickly disappearing behind a shelf of rugs. His mom followed behind leisurely. She wasn't yelling at the kid or taking him aside and trying to do her best Carl Jung imitation on him. ("Are you acting out, Napoleon? Is that the emotion you're demonstrating right now? Mommy feels limited in her punishment options currently since we're in public and I think we need to work on coming to a mutual understanding of each others' action potential.")

She just let him ride, Kmart air conditioning system blowing free through his hair, super smile on his face. Just like we did back in the '70s, when a kid could be a kid and the only thing stopping you from winning an imaginary race down the main Kmart drag was a Blue Light Special. Or the too-sweet smell of a cherry Icee.

posted by rekkidbraka @ 4:12 PM