I went to Sam’s today. Might have been my first time in there in 2007. I met Melanie for Vietnamese, and I’m always hunting for a walk these days, and Sam’s is right behind the shopping center containing Viet Huong.
It was marginally more pleasant than I remember. (In my memory it was dingier, mainly.) 
Melanie shopped for tops while I went for beer and searched in vain for size 12 of the innocuously-styled inexpensive name-brand sneaker they had for $25. The “in vain” part is my experience approximately 90% of the time I look, so I usually buy as many pairs as they have when I do happen upon size 12 in stock. (It’s never a very dramatic number; my record is 3.)
And you know what they say: big feet, ummm…big feet.
Anyway, Costco and Sam’s always have a $25 Adidas, Nike, or Reebok sneaker—it turns over every couple of months—and that’s the shoe I’ve worn for 99% of my waking life for the past five years. This is nerdy and middle-agey, I suppose, though I dare say I’m outpacing my dad on cool points. When he was my age he was fishing his casual shoes out of a gigantic bin marked “Canvas Sneakers – 99¢ each” at Eagle Discount Store on Highway 78 in Oxford. It was a bin of individual shoes, which meant that if you found a left shoe in your size, you now had to find a right shoe in your size.
Aside: Eagle got whacked by a tornado, along with the rest of the Winn-Dixie/Sky City shopping center, on December 3, 1983. My dad’s friend’s son saved a little girl’s life that evening by pulling her with him into a partitioned display that shielded them from the imploding plate glass windows.
My other big discovery at Sam’s today was that they have the size of Tic-Tac container I like in bulk. I don’t consume breath mints at nearly the pace I did when I was smoking, but I still like to have them. And I like for them to fit in the watch pocket of my jeans, because if I keep them there, then they’re subjected to little enough motion that there is no annoying Tic-Tac rattle when I walk. Dropped all the way into the regular jeans pocket? Forget that shit. Sounds like attack of the megaphoned rain-sticks everywhere I go.
I’m happy with the bulk purchase I made today, because it means I’m probably set for six to nine months. But before I discovered these at Sam’s, here was the deal. Target only has the “Big Pack” in bulk (where “in bulk” means four of them).
The Big Pack (left) is too big for me to carry both the mints and my flashlight in my watch pocket. So I have to use a small pillbox (right). But then that means I have to worry about keeping it refilled.
But now that I have two dozen of the Goldilocks size (center), I’m a happy guy.
What a blessing that I have the bandwidth for such trivial problems.
You might also like:
- Melanie lands her seventh perfect square
Melanie is my former mentor and one of my closest friends and favorite people in the world, and she’… - Taking a knife to a concert
A little more than five years ago, I sneaked a pocket knife into a rock concert. It was (and is, I t… - Pho, Old Crow, and all hail the weekend
Saw Melanie today at our seven-years-and-counting Vietnamese restaurant. It may have been three whol… - Babbling in the SuperTarget? Survival mechanism
A big plank in my lose-100-pounds platform is dramatically reducing the frequency with which I eat l… - Today was half of spring break
Well, all of the snow ravaged the boys’ spring break, but two days remained, and one of them was tod…
That third box looks suspiciously like the box my birth control pills come in….
D wears size 13. Ooooh. And my son’s feet are nearly as long as my size 8 1/2s.
Um so happy you have tic tac packs in the size you need. Do we want for anything?
Chili: I bought three blister packs of those pill boxes at Wal-Mart perhaps five years ago. Seems like they were 90¢ for a package of 3, and it was either 2 blue ones and 1 white one or vice versa. That one in the photo is my last one. (I’ve got one in the truck glove compartment with ibuprofen in it, and I have two in my travel toiletries.) Lea has a standing directive to clean them out, up to $20, if she ever sees them anywhere.
‘seester: Ain’t EVER any 13s. When I’m on the hunt, all of the damned boxes usually top out at 10½.
Are you 8½? REALLY? That’s knockin’ on clown feet for a girl, isn’t it? (ducks) 😉
Watch it buster… your significant other wears size 9 1/2 to 10 and you have to go to sleep sometime… and presumably in our bed.
Gives me stability on the mountainside, you know.
Oh – another story about my kids’ big feet. When he was born, his feet were so big the nurses couldn’t fit his footprint in the space on the card they attached to the bassinet. They had to angle his foot corner to corner and just barely got it on there. It was the funniest thing. Baby socks (all those cute lil Saints baby socks we got) would just cover his big toe and about a third of his foot.
hi melanie! good to see you =)
Glad to hear that you were able to find your tictacs.
Now, on the subject of shoes…I’m with saintseester when it comes to my son’s shoe size. He’s 12, 5’4″ (much to older sister’s dismay), wears a men’s 9 wide and hasn’t really started into puberty yet. Lordy, he’s gonna be tall. Mind you, hubby and I are not, 5’10 & 5’6″ respectively.
Nathan’s and Aaron’s feet were too big for all the cutesy baby booties, too. Nathan always had big feet for his age but Aaron runs even bigger. Aaron, who turned three a few months ago, is now in the same sock size as his brother, who is 2 1/2 years older. Nathan usually runs in the 50th to 75th percentile on height in checkups. Aaron usually runs in the 75th to 90th percentile on height in checkups. I keep telling Nathan to be nice to his brother because one day Aaron might be bigger, but that is totally lost on him.
Bo and I aren’t particularly tall, either. However, my dad was tall and several of my uncles are tall, too. So, it is possible that the boys may end up 6′ or taller.
Bo, the SMELL of tic tacs remind me of Granny. She always had them. I don’t buy them because when I do, I feel the urge to consume them all at once. (particularly the orange flavor) BTW do you remember Dyna-mints? They were around when we were little and they were packaged in red and orange or purple and red. They were very good and smelled even better than tic tacs.
I remember Dynamints well. They were packaged landscape to Tic-Tacs’ portrait (opening on the long side instead of the short).
I only ever go with the “Freshmints” Tic-Tacs, which are mostly peppermint with a little splash of anise about them. I would never buy the orange ones for exactly that reason: I’d just dump the box in my mouth.