In the Walmart dairy section, paused over
The organic eggs, I heard a ripple of laughter
Coming from the soda aisle.
I turned to see a full grown woman in pink tights, tutu, and sequins,
Topped by a slanted tiara, swinging a star-lighted wand,
Leaping past the laughing customers.
She did a passing Pirouette. Tiny little wings clung to her back. Strange.
They actually fluttered at the top of her crooked Arabesque.
“Ridiculous. She must have escaped,” I muttered.
She glided to a fourth-position stop at the diet drinks and waved
Her blinking wand over the entire section.
“WHOOP!” echoed through the building.
A platoon of shopping carts crowded the aisle behind her, cheering her on.
I gawked. I could not believe the mass gullibility, and marveled that
None of them bought any soda.
She danced on toward the yogurt, gave an excellent Demi Plié at
The balanced Ph water, and leaped toward me and the eggs.
As she came near, I snorted my disgust for her obvious mental illness.
“There are no fairies in Walmart,” I called out.
She pirouetted and stopped beside me, striking an elegant 4th position pose
And gave me a crooked smile. She waved her wand over my head.
It blinked one, long, blink.
“Roger that,” she chortled to the wand, touching it to both my shoulders,
Then my head.
“Now, there you are,” she whispered, and winked her blue eye.
“Whoop!” went her entourage. She grinned lopsided, and executed
What might have been a Grand Jeté toward the margarine.
“Crazy woman” I muttered as her platoon of shopping carts hurried to follow.
“Whooping” echoed around the store each time she blessed a product
That no one ever put in their cart, but some returned to the shelf.
Surprised, I resisted the urge to follow, but my feet had a different agenda and
My cart did a U-ie to join the mass. Then I realized that everyone was laughing
between Whoops. The gaggle of idiots was having a good time in Walmart!
A tiny, white haired woman did a little hop and a skip,
Hanging on to her rolling cart for dear life.
The crippled man in the scooter tapped his toes and
Wagged his head to an interior tune.
The pregnant mom, with two kids in her cart, stopped and stared.
Securely planted in the middle of the aisle, she gave out a mighty whoop.
Her kids followed suit and cacophony reigned.
The fairy-wannabe-Pied Piper took a leaping left turn,
Blessing the paper goods from mid-air, and disappeared.
I hung on to my determined cart as it dragged me behind her entourage.
She twirled down the aisle, pausing to bless the plastic straws,
Then definitely the foam plates and cups.
“Whoop!” rocked the metal roof.
At the butcher shop, beside the long row of red, raw meat,
The wand’s star blinked furiously.
She stopped short. Shopping carts banged together, piling up behind her.
In a frenzy, she waved and twirled and leaped and made agonizing sounds
—Especially over the whole chickens on the rotisserie—
Thoroughly blessing each piece of dead meat.
When the ensuing “Whoop” penetrated everything in me, I had to admit…
She did quite an elegant blessing.
As she executed another awkward Pirouette,
I saw a single tear escape from her brown eye.
I froze.
Catching my breath, I finally understood what she was doing.
Whirling around, I forged upstream against the traffic,
Left the wild whooping cadre behind,
And headed for the children’s department.
This was too good an opportunity to miss!
Rounding an end-dump on two wheels,
I nearly flattened a blue-haired Walmart partner, —With blinking lights in her hair, no less.
