If it had happened at Walmart, I could have made People of Walmart.

But it didn’t happen in Walmart, it happened in JC Penney.

So many mistakes were made that if I could have a do-over, I’m not even sure which would be the most important to do-over first. Of course the situation would have been avoided entirely had I not attempted to shop for clothes without assistance, but in lieu of that, the next smartest thing would have been not to let the Burt Squirt out of his stroller so he could run amok in the fitting room while I tried on clothes. Smarter still would have been to check before undressing that I was in a fitting room that actually locked, or, at the very least, to make sure that the door latched shut properly so that the Burt Squirt couldn’t push it open and dart out into the Juniors department.

Which is precisely what happened.

While I was clad only in a pair of khaki shorts and a flesh-toned strapless bra, looking, at a glance, quite naked.

It was one of those moments in which you feel suspended in time as the world moves on around you. There I stood, in the wide open doorway of the fitting room, fully exposed to anyone who happened by, watching the Burt Squirt’s short, chubby legs increase the distance across which I would have to streak. He stumbled a little over the toe of his slightly too-long sandal as he looked back over his shoulder to mock me with the gap-toothed grin that should not have been at all adorable under the circumstance, while I stood there, ineffectively calling him to come back to me and wondering whether I was going to have to chase after him, barely clothed as I was, or if I could scramble into a shirt before I lost him in the racks of clothes or worse.

I took my chances and opted to get dressed first. I may be willing to be that mom, who attracts a number of head wags and eye rolls because shecan’t get her toddler to ride in his stroller without him pitching a shrieking temper tantrum, but I’m not quite ready to be that mom, who chases her toddler naked through JC Penney. I still have a shred of dignity left–

–the shred that makes me willing to blog about almost chasing my toddler naked through JC Penney.

Back in 2002, Robin Williams made us all a little leery of the drugstore lab techs who develop our pictures and get a glimpse of our personal lives. Or at least the idea of a lonely, unbalanced Walmart photo center becoming obsessed with a customer through her family pictures made me think twice about getting my photos developed after I saw One Hour Photo. Fortunately I was a college student at the time and couldn’t afford to get pictures developed, and shortly thereafter dawned the age of digital photography and home laser printers, so I was able to put those horror flick-induced fears behind me; One Hour Photo was soon pushed to the back recesses of my mind where movies I didn’t like very much go to be forgotten…

…until today, when I walked into my neighborhood CVS to pick up a few prints.

I was carrying the Burt Squirt, and the rather trollish woman behind the counter saw us as she rang up a customer and made me jump by shouting, “I know that baby!”

At first (because, as I said, I hadn’t thought about One Hour Photo in years) I thought she was referring to the fact that we’re regular customers. I discovered this wasn’t the case when she said, “Oh my gawd, that picture! The one on the playground, with the monkey bars–that is the cutest picture I’ve ever seen! And I see a lot of baby pictures in here!”

Suddenly visions of a psychotic Robin Williams were dancing in my head. My heartbeat quickened–this person not only had seen the Burt Squirt’s pictures, she had my phone number, my address…she was going to to come steal my child–

“I have eight grandchildren,” her nasally tones that sounded uncannily like Roseanne’s interrupted my panicked internal monologue, “so I know about cute kids! You should send that picture to a magazine!”

She was so busy talking up the Burt Squirt’s picture to her customer that she didn’t notice the huge sigh of relief I heaved. Of course, contrary to what the movies would have us believe, most people who work in drugstores are not lonely and unhinged and suffering from delusions of being adopted into the families whose pictures they develop. For most people, developing pictures is just a job.

A job some people are very good at; after telling me how cute my kid was, I was putty in her hands when she asked me if I’d like to buy some picture frames for a dollar apiece.

Why, yes, I will take three, please.

Mr. Burt doesn’t know it, but today two old men saved him about $100.

We were in Macy’s with Mr. Burt’s grandparents, parents, sister, and nieces, and on our way out of the store, my mother-in-law and I got waylaid by a lot of really adorable coats. We share a bit of a fetish, my mother-in-law’s more justifiable than mine being that she lives in Minnesota and actually wears a coat more than two days a year–though I am convinced that only one coat-wearing day a year would have justified the purchase of this particularly adorable coat that caught my eye. It was hot pink wool, after all. With ruffles.

As was the lingerie sported by the mannequin kitty-corner from the coat I was admiring.

The lingerie, naturally, was being admired by a couple of old men.

Only it wasn’t, quite.

If these had been people of Walmart, I wouldn’t have taken any interest in skeezy old men cracking crude jokes as the ogled the white plastic buttcheeks of a thong-wearing dummy. As it was, these were people of Macy’s, of the sort who wore newsboy caps and carried themselves in a way that demanded I refer to them, even mentally, as “gentlemen of a certain age.”

Not that the sex industry hasn’t hijacked the term “gentlemen” in a fit of lewd irony.

But I observed these two gentleman and discovered them not to be leering so much as looking at the scantily clad, headless female forms, and I heard nothing lewd.

Instead, when one gentleman nudged the other with his elbow and pointed at the bare-bottomed beauty, he said, “She’s a bit of a minimalist, that one.”

They walked away, chuckling without a hint of coarseness, and I forgot about the pink ruffled coat.

Because all I could think about was that I’d never heard the word “minimalist” at Walmart.

I was reminded of this Mitch Hedberg bit this morning when, as I put on my makeup, the back of a box of Target brand cotton swabs caught my eye:

That’s right–suggestions for how to use Q-Tips. In pictures, not words, so that people of all languages won’t be stuck scratching their heads as to whether cotton swabs come in handy other than for cleaning ears.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Q-Tips as mini brooms for my computer keyboard, but while they might just be the most effective bathroom cleaner ever, I’m not sure they’d be the most efficient–and as a mom of a nine month-old son, it’s all about efficiency.

Speaking of being a mom, it was–naturally–the last illustration that particularly tickled my funny bone. (The next-to-last tickled my gag reflex; is that a picture of a cotton swab toothbrush?)

But use a Q-tip to comb a baby’s hair? Well! If only I’d paid closer attention to my box of cotton swabs before now, the Burt Squirt might not have had to go around looking like this:

Another one for the Mommy Files, I suppose…

Nah, I buy Q-Tips because I want something to clean my ears with. Not because I want a tiny, fluffy comb!

Growing up in a town with a population of 23,000ish, I took for granted that on any given errand–especially if it was to Walmart–I would run into someone I knew. In six years of living in a city of more than 120,000, I’ve run into friends in Walmart exactly twice, and once in Lowe’s. That’s the full extent of my random friend encounters in town.

The reason for this isn’t just that Carrollton’s a big city, but also that we don’t have a lot of friends who live in Carrollton. That’s not to say we don’t have a lot of friends. We do. They just happen to be scattered throughout the various Dallas suburbs.

Interestingly, of my four cousins, none of whom have ever lived in the same town as me, two have settled down in the area. Mike, the cousin who lives in Carrollton–just two miles from me, in fact–is not one of the friends I’ve encountered in town. But I did run into him in Plano (population 222,000) yesterday–and not at the Plano Walmart.

Oh no, it was way more random than that.

Our friends the Mortons live in Plano. They’re having a baby in December, and as we couldn’t attend the baby shower, we dropped by their house with a gift. Just as we pulled up, the Mortons came out with some people carrying a table. And who should be one of the table-carriers? You guessed it, my cousin Mike.

My immediate thought, of course, was that Mike knew the Mortons. Church was the most likely place they’d meet–until I realized the Mortons and Mike don’t go to the same church. Then I remembered Katie Morton is a school nurse in Plano, and Mike’s wife Donna teaches in Plano, so maybe they knew each other from school. Before I could ask, Mr. Burt did.

Mike’s reply was not, “Through our wives.”

Chuckling, he said, “Through Craig’s List.”

Mr. Burt and I gawped at each other.

“Let me get this straight,” I said to my cousin, “you bought a table off Craig’s List from our friends, who you don’t know, and happened to come pick it up at the same time as we dropped by to visit them for the first time in months?”

As it turned out, I still had to be set straight; the story got even more random. Mike wasn’t buying the table. Friends of his wife bought it. Mike was just there with his mother-in-law’s truck to help them get it home. At the same time as we dropped by to visit our friends for the first time in months.

One of you readers who’s good at math needs to tell me what the odds of that are. Pretty astronomical, I’d wager.