The wife asked me to stop at Walmart on the way home to pick up some bomb green bean casserole someone told her about. Well, Claire and I searched every single aisle and it was terrible. I called Donna back and she said it was frozen, so we headed back to the frozen foods. I found the “Stock Supervisor” whose nametag said he had 10 years of service and experience at Sam Walton’s crazy blue box. This man walked the same aisles I just walked and shrugged his shoulders. I was outta luck.

I called Donna back to tell her the news, and all she told me was to buy the ingredients and make it myself. Damn. And I thought maybe I could get out of it. I wasn’t sure what was in this stuff and since I knew there was mushroom soup mix, I knew I would never ever be eating it at all. Fougeddaboutit! NO. But other people were counting on me including my ever increasingly 3 1/2 year old whine bucket.

As I walked the aisles aimlessly I saw a students of mine who’d not been in class earlier that day. Never one to miss an opportunity to catch someone try to pull the wool over on my eyes, I called out to her as I approached her in our aisle. She immediately began talking to me, and at first acted like she was caught. Then she began to explain that she didn’t have her homework because her stepdad was arrested and she couldn’t get into her house since the police were still in their with search warrants.

Damn, I’ve heard some good ones, but not this one. Somewhere while she was telling me this tale, I noticed crunchy onion strips in her cart and nothing else. I pointed to them and asked where they were. Her friend was with her (who I taught last year) and pointed back down the aisle. I told the friend to go grab me one, so she did. I told my student that I needed the same ingredients, and I said “Let’s Shop!” So Claire and I, my former student and current student went looking for groceries. We found the mushroom soup mix, and then I saw the bacon bits. I knew I needed them for a broccoli salad I wanted to make so I told the girl to grab them. She read the directions on the back, and we went on search of those ingredients, too.

Within 10 minutes we both had everything we needed, and I didn’t have to think at all! They picked out what they needed and grabbed an extra one of each for my cart! Claire and I were out of there and on our way home in no time.