This is… oh geez, um, this is really difficult for me to talk about. You see, I have been shopping at Wal-Mart almost as long as I can remember. I mean, I remember when I was just a wee child and my mother or father would take me to Hinky-Dinky or Alco or even K-Mart to buy food and clothes, and I was known in the village as the kid that went completely ape shit at every store unless my parents bought me the toy that I wanted. Then when I became a man, or maybe it was when I was around ten or so, Wal-Mart came into my life and changed it forever.

 

Wal-Mart was just a shitty generic store that mostly sold clothes and toys when I was a kid, but I grew and became wiser, and so did Wal-Mart. Until one day I was old enough to drive a car and shave my face and Wal-Mart had grown into a very respectable Wal-Mart Supercenter. It just happened so fast. You get so wrapped up in the daily grind that you fail to see them grow. One day they don’t even have automatic doors and the next time you see them they have self-checkout and motorized carts for the ham planets to drive around the store. The Wal-Mart Supercenter grew up to be so strong that it forced Alco and the gayly named Hinky-Dinky out of town. And who the hell still shops at K-Mart?

 

My high school friends and I shopped at the Supercenter daily. We even managed to master the art of shoplifting from Wal-Mart before they put in the detectors at the doors and I still don’t know how the cameras didn’t see us. My favorite thing to steal was the “No Shoplifting” signs because the irony made me giggle. There were so many different ways of scamming Wal-Mart back in the day, but now if you bought a new Playstation 3 and replaced it with your broken Playstation 3, they actually check the serial number when you return it. And all of the video games are behind glass and it’s impossible to walk around eating doughnuts from the bakery without having to pay for them first. Oh listen to me, I’m just rambling on about the good old days. I was so loyal to Wal-Mart and I went there so often that I eventually just called it Church.

 

Times have changed now. Both the Church and I are aging and falling apart. I messed up my shoulder a few weeks ago and I’ll be damned if my left knee hasn’t been fussing with me, all while Wal-Mart stopped selling my omega-3 eggs and their prices have gone up a pinch. Well anyway, I think it was about 4, maybe 5 weeks ago that I realized just how cheap and healthy it would be to make apples the keystone of my diet. This was before I learned the hard way that eating 5 or more apples a day would lead to the most violent and unforgiving diarrhea that isn’t caused by Ebola.

 

So I was about a week into this apple and protein shake diet and had yet to experience the horrible hot-water shits and I was driving to Wal-Mart late at night to stock up on more apples. Just as I was about to take a right to turn into Wal-Mart, I got a wild hair in my ass and decided to take a risk in life, so I turned left and drove into the Hy-Vee parking lot instead.

 

The first thing that I saw when I entered Hy-Vee, or the HIV as I call it, were the largest, plumpest, and most gorgeous red braeburn apples that I have ever seen. These things were the size of dinosaur eggs and when I approached the towering pile of gargantuan apples I looked at the sign to the right and it said, “48 Cents a Pound”. I bought 12 pounds of these freakish apples for less than 6 dollars. I had to buy more egg whites and olive oil while I was there because I didn’t want to pay for less than 6 dollars worth of apples using my debit card. Even with the other shit that I bought it was less than 15 bucks. And those HIV apples, oh boy, I gotta tell you that these were the best goddamn apples that this sumbitch has ever eaten. And they’re so damn cheap that I’m having my car engine converted so it can run off of apples. You know what else? The HIV’s egg whites were of much higher quality and slightly cheaper than the Church’s watery white crap. The HIV’s egg whites look like they just came right out of the shell, with their higher viscosity and clearer complexion. And the extra virgin olive oil that I bought there, well it tastes just like Wal-Mart’s olive oil and it’s about the same price so whatever.

 

Anyway, I have found myself turning left into Hy-Vee whenever I need to buy groceries now. I feel like a traitor or a heretic for leaving my beautiful Wal-Mart. And I thought those leviathan apples at the HIV would go back up to some ridiculous price once they were not on sale, but they’re still just 68 cents a pound. I haven’t bought any more of them though because I am unable to cope with the apple splatters every 2 hours, but still, that’s just so damn cheap. And guess what? The HIV sells omega-3 eggs now and the Church doesn’t. I’m even purchasing my usual Wal-Mart fare like popcorn and Sriracha Sauce at the HIV now. I still buy my generic Mio water flavoring stuff at Wal-Mart though because Hy-Vee water flavoring stuff tastes like cock-snot when mixed in my vodka.

 

I enjoy myself thoroughly while shopping at Hy-Vee. The people there are infinitely more attractive in both the visual and olfactory senses and I have yet to meet a checkout worker that I wouldn’t want to have intercourse with and they look genuinely happy to be there. But whenever I walk out the doors of the HIV, I am forced to look at my faithful Church staring back at me from across the street. And each time I look, those blue colors on the Wal-Mart sign appear to be just a little bit bluer.