Last Monday I had to make two trips to Walmart instead of one (by the way, I’m thinking of turning this into a Walmart blog, since all my posts seem to be about going there) because I somehow made it home without the lunch meat I specifically remember selecting from the refrigerated case and putting in my grocery cart.  No idea what happened to it; I checked my receipt and didn’t pay for turkey breast.  Possibly it stayed in my cart and rotted in the heat until some poor cart-collector found it.

This week, I was leaving Walmart when a voice called, “Ma’am!  Excuse me, Ma’am!”  I turned around to see my cashier chasing me down, waving what appeared to be a packet of seasoning.  “This is yours, Ma’am, you forgot it!”  I thanked her, thinking it was my fajita seasoning, and glad I wasn’t going to have a repeat of last week’s two Walmart trips.

Except that it wasn’t fajita seasoning.  It was buffalo wing seasoning.  Which the cashier insisted I keep, even though I insisted it wasn’t mine.  Maybe I paid for it; I didn’t care enough to check my receipt.

The point of the story:  last week I didn’t get all my groceries, and this week I got extra groceries.  It all evened out.

This wasn’t my only experience this week of situations evening each other out.

Also last Monday at Walmart, I was the victim of parking lot theft.  As in, someone whipped through a row, going the wrong direction, and stole the parking space into which I was just about to turn.  I was incensed!  How could someone be so rude — and to a lady with a baby in the car?!

Later that same shopping trip, I was having some difficulty unpacking my cart to pay for my groceries while holding a Burt Squirt who did not want to be in his carrier.  The man ahead of me in line noticed my struggle and then proceeded to unload my entire cart for me.  (Possibly this explains the lunch meat going AWOL.)

But see what happened?  Someone was rude to me, then someone was extremely kind to me.  It all evened out.

This of course reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “The Opposite” (quite possibly my favorite episode), in which George was down but goes up (by doing the opposite of his instincts), Elaine was up but goes down (thanks to Jujyfruits), and Kramer dubs Jerry “Even Steven” (because he loses a gig and then gets a gig).

That’s me!

(If only blogging about Walmart would reveal my comedic genius and lead to my becoming fabulously wealthy like Mr. Seinfeld.)

Recently I posted about how having a big baby attracts lots of comments from strangers.  (And by “strangers” I mean people who are strange. Mostly in Walmart.)

That wasn’t exactly the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

In fact, simply having a baby, of any size, shape, or color, attracts lots of comments from strangers. Though I still mean people who are strange, and mostly in Walmart.

Take, for example, the woman who meandered over to me one afternoon as I attempted to simultaneously calm a screaming Burt Squirt and find a particular variety of Italian sausage I buy for lasagna (which, of course, Walmart had stopped selling, in typical Walmart fashion).

“Is it a widdle teensy baby?” she asked as she approached the cart.

“Not too teensy,” I answered, slightly embarrassed that my three month-old apparently sounded like he was having a newborn meltdown in the grocery store, and bracing myself to be judged for it.  “He’s about–”

Before I could tell her the Burt Squirt’s age, the woman, peering down into the cart, interrupted, “Oh, yes he’s a widdle teensy boy.”

I heaved a sigh of relief.  No judgment!

Then the woman’s eyes flicked up to me, the haze of baby admiration dissipating abruptly like a summer thunderstorm in Texas.  “He wants you to hold him, Mama.”

My defenses flew up as my mouth fell open.  First of all, how was I supposed to hold my fourteen-pound baby and push a shopping cart full of groceries at the same time?  Second, I was not that woman’s mama!

Alas, neither indignant response emitted from my lips. Quite the opposite, I shrugged, indicating my helplessness in the situation, muttered something about Walmart having stopped carrying the sausage I needed, and pushed cart and screaming child onward.

Though my shoulders hunched under the burden of my inadequacy, my feelings, apparently, weren’t evident enough for the woman.

She called after me, “Where is his paci?”

Pride goeth before the fall — or before the stumble over the grocery cart, in this case.  For, you see, up until then, I’d ridiculously worn it as a badge of pride that my baby didn’t like pacifiers.  He didn’t need them. He could soothe himself without that crutch, and I would never have to go to the trouble of breaking the paci habit. And, best of all, no photos of his cute mouth hidden by a paci.

In that moment, I realized that was a load of utter crap and wished to God my baby was a constant pacifier sucker. That I could whip one out, pop it in, quiet the baby and, most importantly, shut. that. woman. up.

Or, better yet, he’d have had a paci to start with and I never would have had my mothering abilities called into question in the first place.

Things being what they were, I was close to tears as I turned and said, “He won’t take a paci at all.  He hates them.”

Even as I said the words, my brain told me I didn’t owe that busybody an explanation, least of all an apology, for my child’s preferences.  In my head, I knew that. But there’s nothing like unsolicited advice from a strange person in Walmart to break a new mommy’s heart.

Eventually I did resort to taking the Burt Squirt out of his carseat.  In Mama’s arms, his crying instantly stopped. It should have been sweet relief, but instead it was only so much salt in my wounds. Rubbed in deeper when, rounding the corner of the frozen foods aisle, a met the woman again, as she meandered through the bakery, munching on a sticky bun.

“See?” she said around a bite, “I told you he just needed you, Mama.”

As I gritted my teeth, she proceeded to explain to me how I could spare myself future hissy fits by foregoing the carseat and propping him up in the main baby seat with pillows.

Rather than walk away, or at the very least, point out how ridiculous it would be for me to drag a bunch of pillows grocery shopping, on top of the kid and all his personal effects, I listened politely, and even said, with such a show of cheerfulness that I deserve an Academy Award, “He’s eying your pastry.”

Any normal person would know I wasn’t dropping a subtle hint with that comment. But we’re not talking about normal people, we’re talking about strange people at Walmart.

“Would he eat some?” she asked, and broke off a bite-sized portion of her sticky bun.

I gawped at her, and at her sticky bun.

“Thank you,” I managed to sputter after a moment. “But he’s exclusively breastfed. Also, he doesn’t have any teeth.”

I adjusted the Burt Squirt on my hip, wheeled the cart around with my free hand, and proceeded to the checkout, my confidence in my mothering abilities restored.

“Can he sit up?” asked Lindsay, the photographer, at the start of our three month-old’s session at the JC Penney Portrait Studio.

“For a few seconds,” I replied, my husband quickly adding, his voice strident with paternal pride, “He did it for a whole minute the other day!”

“We’ll give it a try,” Lindsay said.

Try was the operative word. After a few unsuccessful attempts at snapping a picture before the Burt Squirt toppled over sideways (I think this had less to do with the Burt Squirt not having good balance than with his not wanting to sit up), she asked her assistant for the various tools of the photography trade that keep infants propped up for photo shoots.

She asked us, “How old is he?”

“Three months,” I answered, my husband chiming in again, “Four months on Thursday, actually!”

Lindsay stopped arranging the Burt Squirt and looked him over.  “Seriously?  He’s big.  I thought he must be five or six months.  That’s why I asked if he could sit up.”  She shook her head, chuckled to herself.  And repeated, “He’s big!”

“We get that a lot,” I said, because it was the truth.

A few weeks earlier, a Walmart cashier had clucked her tongue at the sleeping baby in the shopping cart.  “Oo-ee!  He’s juicy! How old that child?”

“Eleven weeks,” I replied, adding, as the cashier furrowed her brow in the effort to convert weeks to months, “Almost three months.”

“Three months!’ the cashier cried, then proceeded to grumble, “Ain’t no way that baby only three months.  Look like he five or six months.  Three months.  Heh.”

She looked up, suddenly, and her grumbles became a shout at a fellow cashier just closing up at the next wrap stand.  “How old you think this baby look?”

The second cashier shambled over and looked the Burt Squirt up and down.  “Five or six months.”

“He three months old!” said the first cashier.

Now it was me who was being looked up and down.  “What you feeding this child?  Cereal?”

“Nope,” I replied, grinning in amusement — and, I admit — a touch of pride, “just breastmilk.”

“Breastmilk.”  The cashier’s eyes dropped a few inches south of my chin.  “Heh.  I never did none of that breastmilk.  Hurt too much.”

I chuckled politely, because, well…what do you say to a Walmart cashier when she tells you about her breastfeeding pain?  She shifted her attention to the still-sleeping Burt Squirt.

“Three months old and he that big…I bet you don’t qualify for wick, do you?”

“Pardon?”  I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.

“Wick,” she repeated.

It wasn’t until she explained that she, too, had a baby who was big for his age, and that somehow that had kept them from qualifying for it, that I understood she was asking if I received WIC.

She proceeded to tell me how she’d gotten around the problem of having a big, healthy-looking baby by getting her sister to apply for WIC, while I contemplated how strange this conversation had become.  Never in my life had I been asked if I was on, or had applied for, government assistance.

Did I look poor?  I was wearing my bleach-stained yoga pants and an old t-shirt and had tied my hair up in a quick, sloppy bun.  Then again, you can buy that look at designer boutiques.

Maybe it was because, rather than buy expensive baby formula, I’d resorted to feeding my child from my own breasts.

Or maybe it was just because I was shopping at Walmart.  It was, after all, the very supermarket in which a woman stalked me, offering parenting advice to me and bits of a sticky bun to the Burt Squirt. But that’s another story for another day.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the low low prices that keep me shopping at Walmart.  It’s the stories.  (It’s certainly not the way they randomly stop selling items that are a part of my regular shopping list.)

(Okay, I admit it.  The low low prices are the main reason I shop at Walmart.  But the stories are a bonus.)

I’d say that, as the mommy of a big baby, these stories are my new normal, except that I’ve got lots of strange stories about Walmart, going back long before I was the mommy of a big baby.

But then, doesn’t everyone?