Repeat Offender: A(nother) Walmart Story

I don’t always get hit-on at Walmart, but I don’t get hit-on anywhere else. Must be the lighting.

Last weekend I got hit-on at Walmart again. I was standing there, trying to figure out if I should climb on the bottom shelf to try to reach the last 2 jars of marshmallow fluff on a higher shelf, all the way in the back. (I need marshmallow fluff for the fudge I make every Christmas.) Out of nowhere this guy comes up next to me, touches my arm in a familiar/flirting way, and says in a low voice, “Excuse me, are you married?” Whaaaa…??

I instantly recoiled and stumbled a few steps back. “I’m divorced,” I mumbled. But I also remember thinking, Who are you? Why is my marital status any of your business? Then I turned and got a good look at him: he was a guy who’d hit on me exactly a year before, in the same store!

He kept talking. “That was my son I was with back there.” I gave him a blank look. (I vaguely remembered passing him and a younger guy a moment before, but I didn’t feel like adding any fuel to the idea that I might have actually “noticed” him, or that I was interested in anything other than finishing my shopping.) Undeterred, he continued: “I saw you walk past, and I said to my son how beautiful you were, and he said I should go talk to you.”

“Uh–.”

He then launched into the same story he’d told me a year earlier, about how his wife had walked out him 20 years ago, and he’d been a single father all this time. He talked (again) about how hard it was to be a single dad, having to do all the cleaning, all the mopping, all the household chores all alone, and how he was looking for someone to share the everyday part of life with – pretty much the exact same sob-story he’d

No, not a girlfriend. THIS is what you want!

told me then, too. I wanted to tell him to google Merry Maids, but bit my tongue. (And he kept bringing up mopping – must have mentioned it at least three times. Why doesn’t he just get a mop-version of a Roomba?)
Clearly he didn’t remember me. Maybe I should’ve been offended. Instead, I was just relieved. All I wanted to do was get away from him, because he was giving me the creeps, just like a year ago. As soon as he let me speak, I said, “Sorry, I’m not in a place where I’m dating right now. Good luck finding whoever you’re looking for.” And went on my way.

I never did get the marshmallow fluff….