I hate Wal-Mart. I have too much self-respect to shop for clothing at that place. However, I will buy stuff for my kids there.

Kids’ feet grow so fast that I’ll be damned if I’m going to continually drop large amounts of cash on good quality footwear only for them to be bitching at me four months later that their shoes are too small. I’ll take them to Wal-Mart and buy them some cheap, made in China piece of shit shoes and boots and know that they will still outgrow them before they start to fall apart.

Once their feet stop growing I’ll buy them better stuff. I paid $175 for my (ahem) size 12 winter boots over ten years ago and have no plans to replace them soon. They still have the original laces.

Yesterday the kids got out of school early – Friday is a half day for them – and I told them we had to go buy shoes, boots, underwear and socks because I promised mommy I would look after it while she was away on a business trip.

“No. Whine. Bitch. Moan. I don’t want to.” You know the drill.

Me: “We’ll have lunch at McDonalds.”

Them: “Yay!” Grabbing coats and putting shoes on.

When I was a kid I liked McDonalds too. Now I can only stomach it about three times a year. It had been at least five months since we’d been there.

What Wal-Mart is to shopping, McDonalds is to food. They both suck, so it’s not surprising that they would be in some unholy alliance together. We walked in through the front door and I was assaulted with olfactory nostalgia.

Can you still call it nostalgia if it’s bad?

Growing up, we were pretty poor until I neared my teenage years, so we would shop at stores like Woolco and K-Mart. Even though I was a little kid and knew we didn’t have much money, I hated these places and felt like I didn’t belong there. Call me an elitist prick, but I felt like I was cut out for better things.

It was the smell. I was too good for the smell. I deserved to shop at a store that smelled better.

ALL of these discount stores have the same smell to me. It’s a mixture of some sort of cheap rubber and vomit. It’s like these stores have secret stashes of these lousy, also made in China rubberized containers that are filled with puke. It’s the same smell at all of them. I hate it.

I ignored the portly Wal-Mart greeter with the comb-over (NOTE: I thought about writing “bad” comb-over, but that seemed terribly redundant), and we quickly made our way to the back of the store into the McDonalds and the Wal-Mart stench was replaced with Big Mac smell, which I hate a little less.

I really should have had lunch before we left, because I realized that I was hungry. My son got a ten-pack of McNuggets along with fries that he would share with his sister, and my daughter got a double cheeseburger. I got two double cheeseburgers.

Those cheeseburgers have 490 Calories each, 40% of which comes from fat, more than half of which is saturated. If you’ve read my book, you know that’s bad.

The first thing I did was remove what was likely the healthiest part of the burgers: the pickles. I hate pickles. So does my daughter, so I took hers off too. We all started scarfing.

The first one tasted pretty good, but I was still hungry and dug into the second, which didn’t taste nearly so good. As I sat there I noticed the other customers walking about the store and wished I’d had my camera to take pictures to send to that People of Wal-Mart site.

A small fight broke out over the last of the French fries and I had to intervene.

My son only ate seven of his McNuggets so I had two and the last one was slated for demolition. My daughter ate about three-quarters of her burger and I didn’t even remotely consider finishing it off.

I felt gross. I can’t believe Morgan Spurlock ate that shit for an entire month.

I’d run 12 kilometres that morning, and this was not considered good recovery food. Barf. Nevertheless, it was time to get this shopping trip over with.

We went to the shoe section. My son also needed new boots so we started there. My daughter took off over to where the girl shoes were and was completely out of my sight. I let her do it because she seemed confident enough with picking shoes for herself, and I was going to have my hands full with the boy.

“Daddy,” my son said. “Can we get one of the people to help us? I want to get my foot measured.”

“This is Wal-Mart, son. You don’t get help here.”

“But I want my foot measured.”

“And I want to be anywhere else but here.”

“Daddy!” Yes, my 11-year-old son still calls me Daddy. I like it.

“It’s a waste of time. We’ll find something that fits and then you’ll know your shoe size.”

I was helping the boy with a pair of boots when all of a sudden the speaker directly above us blared out at fighter jet volumes something about a special at the McDonalds. It was so loud I just about threw my back out from being startled. I was in such a pissy mood that I actually yelled at the speaker: “For God’s sake turn that crap down.”

They didn’t listen.

It seems like every 30 seconds there was some kind of blaring announcement, directly above our heads, in a nasally voice that sounded like Fran Drescher with emphysema. I was getting ready to totally fucking lose it.

Finding a good pair of boots for the boy didn’t take too long, but new runners were a different story. We were trying on a third pair when my daughter put in an appearance. “How about these runners?”

“Those aren’t runners. Those are ballet slippers. Try again.”

Four more pairs of boy shoes and countless blaring announcements later I was developing a serious twitch. My daughter showed up again. “How about these?”

“Getting better, but still too ballet.”

Three more pairs of shoes for the boy. He must have some kind of mutant-shaped feet; either that or he was just screwing with me. I began to develop chest pain.

“Listen, son. These are the last pair that they’ve got in your size. If they don’t fit then we’re going to start trying on girl shoes.”

He tried them on. “They’re a little bit uncomfortable. I don’t like the tongue. It digs in.”

“Would you rather have girl shoes?”

“No. I guess we can get these.”

At that point my daughter showed up with another pair of runners, and they were a good choice. Did I mention that she’s only eight? There must be some chromosomal propensity for shoe shopping with the female gender, because she was able to manage the entire process by herself.

“All right, let’s get some socks and underpants and get the hell out of this place.”

The only thing I’m going to say about that is: What kind of dumbass decided that it was a good idea to make boys’ underwear in white? Seriously, he must have a Gump-like IQ level because any male under the age of 15 ranks personal hygiene somewhere between watching chick movies and shoe shopping.

We waited in the usual long check-out line and I fidgeted, anxious to get as far away from Wal-Mart as possible. I was feeling miserable and generally pissed off. The kids sensed my mood and kept quiet. Either that or they were experiencing a post-McDonalds crash and didn’t have the energy to be a pain in the ass.

I finally got all our purchases swiped by the cashier and she asked, “Would you like to make a donation to the Red Cross for Haiti earthquake relief?”

That sure put things into perspective. Here I was feeling miserable and sorry for myself because I had to go to Wal-Mart. Meanwhile tens of thousands of people had died and many more continued to suffer in Haiti because of the terrible situation down there.

I started to feel like a complete tool.

“Sir?” The cashier snapped me out of my reverie.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Yes, definitely. I would like to make a donation.”

That made me feel better, and I hope it helps make someone else feel better too.