Summer of Sam's Club: Anything but Chocolate

After I learned to understand Aunt Liz's directions, I made it to Sam's Club, her favorite retail Mecca. My assignment was to purchase enough bulk items to fill her huge larder and restock her 2 fridges and the extra freezer unit in the garage. As I steered the blue barge-like shopping cart beneath the think plastic fringed gates and showed the greeter my aunt's membership card, my chest contracted and my belly glurged. It was almost like my first few minutes aboard submarine Becuna.

Like the City in Babe, a Pig in the City, where the World Trade Center, the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House occupy the same block, Sam's Club is a world of dreamlike juxtaposition. Radial tires alongside diapers. The Godfather DVDs next to crates of WD-40. Respectable middle aged women in walking shorts next to their sleazy t-shirt wearing daughters (I guess if let your kid wear a shirt that says "Slutz go down easy" it's your duty to escort her through public spaces). At first, Sam's Club appears to have everything you could ever want. Then you see that all they have is everything that most people want in containers that even fewer people can actually carry, only when most people want something, it's likely to run out. And that was what happened to every flavor of Ensure but the chocolate. Something is so horribly wrong with the Chocolate Ensure formula, not even people on limited diets will touch it. Chocolate is to Ensure what green is to lollipops.

Even without my uncle's Ensure, the black-eyed peas and the proper brand of condensed milk, I was gratefully welcomed back to Aunt Liz's. It felt great to be appreciated, even if it was only for the successful delivery of frozen breaded shrimp and enough paper towels to clean a small skyscraper.