I hate Wal-Mart.

Last night at 9:55 I needed spray primer. The reason is procrastination. (Though attributable to bad painters and terrible construction workers, my late-night prime and paint (tm Trading Spaces) turned out to be in vain. But that is an irritating story for another day.) I'll spare you the details, and instead get to the meat of the story: poor planning got me to Lowe's at 10:02; the doors were already locked. And I panicked - I really needed the primer and I sure wasn't going to find it at my neighborhood Food Lion. (Not that I was anywhere close to my neighborhood, such as it is, but that is also a story for another day). And then I remembered - Wal-Mart is open until midnight! Wal-Mart will save me!

But here's the problem with me and Wal-Mart: I really hate it. I am of two rather contradictory retail minds. The first likes to wear nice black clothes and stylish uncomfortable shoes and own things purchased from Macy*s and Nordstrom. It goes to New York and spends $27 on Shiseido liner and will still say it was worth it. It is perfectly willing to pay $3 for turkey trussing pins (stainless, mind you) when Mom gasps at the checkout, imagining how her own probably only cost 97 cents at MacFrugal's. This mind hates to wash and reuse Ziploc bags, thinks paying full price is just fine, thanks, and thinks that Lee Jeans and Cover Girl are about as bad as it gets. This mind is, frankly, snobbish, and not very true to its bargain-hunting roots.

The other mind likes money and is happy to save said money when purchasing things like Mitchum, 409, lightbulbs, and film. This mind is grudgingly willing to wander around Wal-Mart, from one end to the other, trying to remember if the primer would be near the bedsheets or the silk flowers. This mind, in its pressure to buy cheap - and let's face it, in its poor ability to plan well - tends to get very cranky. Sometimes this mind even says out loud in the Rubbermaid storage aisle things like, "Where in the aitch are the closet organizers?" only after weaving through nearly the entire store thinking they'd be near the plastic-veneer coated desks.

So, when both minds converge in the North Durham branch of middle America, they get mad pretty quickly. Wal-Mart's organizational structure consistently eludes me. Never mind that every store is set up differently, or that aisle markers are practically non-existent, or that the giant Paint sign in the center of the store was obscured so that I walked past, muttering and sighing audibly, twice. The bottom line is this: Wal-Mart stocks too. much. stuff. Nobody can think clearly when confronted with that much variety in one badly-lit place.

Wal-Mart's aisle displays, too, are little traps: that yellow smiley face - currently channeling Robin Hood and a patronizing "help the poor" mentality - practically screams at you in 100 pt. black letters "YOU MUST HAVE THIS BODY WASH FOR ONLY THREE DOLLARS." I get sucked right in for reasons any marketing expert could promptly tell me, yet when I get home with my 75 ounces of body wash, I'm usually fairly certain I didn't need it after all.

More than anything, though, I hate Wal-Mart because it invariably takes 20 minutes to check out. I know I ought to, in general, have more patience, I know The National Enquirer and Soap Opera Digest are placed within my reach to distract me from the 7 people in front of and behind me, and of course it makes no sense for all 20 lanes to be open at once. But maybe 5 or 6. Otherwise, you might do what I did last night: set that $5 candle I HAD to have right in the middle of the M&Ms and leave it behind, vowing never to return again.