May I Help You?

Mom said that's a joke - no one wants to help her anywhere anymore. I said, "Mom, just tell me what you need. I've got you." She just mumbled something about how she needed help an hour ago. Wait, I thought, when did I miss helping Mom? Big Brother told me not to worry about it. He said Mom was in the middle of a rant, and it was best if we both stayed away from her for our own safety. But I wanted to know more about rants, so I followed her to the kitchen - at a safe distance.

There Dad was the unfortunate recipient of Mom's rant, which I discovered was a whole lot of vehement complaining and commentary on a particular subject, which in this case was her trip to Walmart with Big Brother. The trouble started in the bike aisle. Dad, who must not know much about how rants work either, said something that sounded like, "Knew it was a bad idea to buy a bike there," which did not help tamp down the rant.

Mom said she oughta be able to go to a store that sells bikes and actually look over the inventory, and Big Brother should be able to at least sit on a few. But all the bikes Big Brother's size were on racks above Mom's head, including the bike in the ad that was on clearance. Mom asked a nice young man (I'm editing for language), who said he would find someone to help. Why he couldn't help was something Mom could not understand. While they waited for the nice young man to send help, Mom and Big Brother tried to take a look at some other models.

After 5 minutes or so, Mom's impatience got the better of her, and she cajoled Big Brother into helping her get the clearance bike down (that's a kind summary of Mom's frustrations with Big Brother's teen angst about being seen doing something he felt Walmart people would be mad about, which Mom pointed out was unlikely, since no one was around to help).

Once down, the bike's tires were flat. Whomp, whomp. They moved on to the other models - if they could team up to get the clearance bike down, Mom surmised they could get a few more down, too; Big Brother still feared security, but he complied. The first one was missing the back wheel, and I wanted to ask how they couldn't tell that while they were taking it down, but thankfully, I was catching on to how rants work, and I knew to keep quiet. I could tell Dad wanted to ask the same thing, but he was getting smarter, too. Another one had a broken chain, and the last option was missing a pedal.

Back to the clearance bike. Big Brother wanted to give up, but Mom walked two aisles over and returned with a bike pump, proceeded to pump up the tires, and ordered Big Brother to take the bike for a spin. If taking the bike down inspired some angst, you can imagine what riding a bike through Walmart did to my only brother.

Good news - the bike was a great fit, a little crash with a shopping cart in the towel aisle notwithstanding, and - as Mom could not stop herself from pointing out to Big Brother - not one store associate spoke to them about any of it after the lying, nice young man failed to send help.

Big Bro documented Mom pumping so he could throw her under the bus when security arrived.

On to the cleaning aisle. All Mom wanted was a special thing to clean the windows - a long-handled Libman brush with a squeegee. When she finally found it, to Mom's dismay, there was no squeegee. Not one squeegee was attached to any of the brushes hanging on the rack. The picture taped to the handle had a squeegee on it, and the description on the app said it included a squeegee, but no squeegees on the brushes in the store.

Mom, who is a hard learner, stopped an associate to ask for help. He checked out the label and zapped it with his phone, only to tell Mom it's supposed to have a squeegee. Mom asked if there were any others in the back, but it wasn't his area. So, Mom, the walking version of the head-banging emoji, found someone else and asked that lady for help. Guess what? It wasn't her area either. She at least went in the back to look and came out with another guy. Both Mom and the lady assumed it was his area, but nope - not his area either, although he also confirmed the squeegee was clearly missing.

They all stood looking at each other until Mom gave up and headed to the checkout with the bike Big Brother had been pushing behind her. He told me later that he hadn't sensed the extent of Mom's frustrations, so as they were rolling the bike out, he said, "Guess you aren't cleaning the windows today." Mom offered him the chance to ride the bike home.

Mom wrapped up her soap-box rant about how no one anywhere is helpful in stores with, "Even Gus would be a better customer associate than 90% of the people I bumped into while shopping today!"

I still don't know why Mom kept asking for help, if she knows no one is ever really helpful anymore, but I'm happy to know that if my therapy dog dreams are never realized, I've got another potential career option.