I still got it?

I had to go to the Wal-Marts the other day for dog food, eyeliner... just the necessities. I ended up perusing around the clothing department...it's next to the card department, and there were a couple of guys causing a ruckus looking for a father's day card or something. They were dressed in fatigues, not for fashion but more for occupation, and normally a man in uniform will turn my head, but well...I"m sure they were nice guys but nothing to write home about.

They were finally able to get the attention of a Wal-Mart associate to aid them in their quest for the perfect card, apparently they couldn't find anything but birthday cards, when the big one, the obnoxious one eyed me.

"Hey, how ya doin?" He yells from 30 feet away, I raise my head and nod and probably said fine, when he seems to think it appropriate to announce to me that he is available. "I'm single ya know." I smile and say, "Really? Wow, what a surprise."

I left after that, had enough of the Wal-Marts for the day, making a mental note to file that encounter away to tell Mr. Vasey or Spanky about later.

Fast forward a day, when I finally get around to telling Mr. Vasey that I sorta got hit on at the Wal-Marts, which considering the person that sorta hit on me, I really shouldn't be telling people about the sort of people that I attract, but I guess I have no shame.

So I tell him the story and his response is, "Boy, what is it about you and picking up guys at Wal-Mart?" And this is something that I never even thought of....what is it about me and the Wal-Marts?

How a flat tire changed everything

I had just moved to the metro-plex back in 2003. I was working for free, living off of my last paycheck at my previous job and the money I got from my 401K, which wasn’t much, when I happened to get two flat tires in one week.

My cousin who lived nearby gave me directions to the most easily accessible Wal-Mart in the area, and the next day, with barely two pennies to scrape together, I went to the Wal-Marts fully intending to just have them patch up my holes and send me on my way.

I’m sitting in the waiting room at the Tire and Lube Express at the Wal-Marts, completely grunged out as I woke up late for my internship and didn’t have time to shower, I was wearing a pair of black, baggie, cargo-style pants, a blue striped beanie and I was sporting the whole longsleeved t-shirt underneath a short sleeved t-shirt. When one of the grease monkeys comes in and asks if I’m the owner of the Olds. I said I was and while still standing in the doorway he tells me that the tires are too worn and he won’t be able to patch them up, and if he does just patch them up I’ll be back in a few days with flat tires again. I tell him I really don’t have the money for new tires and I asked him to see if there was any way I could get outta there without having to buy new tires. He complies and goes back outside ... only to return a few minutes later.

He sits down this time, right beside me, I’m taken aback a bit as I am kind of a Nazi when it comes to my personal space and it being intruded upon by strangers. He again says that he wouldn’t be able to just patch them up, I needed new tires.

“Why is it everytime I come to Wal-Mart I always have to buy new tires, what do you get outta this?” I said.

He swore he didn’t get anything and that I really needed new tires, “And plus I couldn’t let a girl as cute as you drive out of here on those tires.”

I’m sure I blushed. Was this dude hitting on me? “Um...OK, I guess just do what you have to do.”
He tried to make me feel better, “Hey I’ll make it up to you, I’ll take ya out for dinner or something sometime.”

Hmmm, I guess he is hitting on me. Have I ever been hit on before? No usually I have to do the hitting, this is all very strange to me. “Uh...ya...Sure, OK" I say, but thinking "Ya I'm probably never going to see you again, grease monkey dude."

He leaves and after a few minutes, the manager calls my name to tell me that my car is ready, and as I’m up at the counter paying, the tire guy walks up to me again and says that he’s about to go to lunch, and if I wanted to go with him.

"Boy he likes to work fast" I think, and so I stand there a minute and think about this proposition…ok is he going to rape me in the middle of the day? Would I even enjoy going to lunch with a grease monkey? Is a grease monkey really my type? He said he was paying, and I didn’t have any friends here yet, so I ran all the possible senarios through my head and I decided to go with it and at the very least get a free lunch and at the worst I'd be found dead on the side of the road. But I'm more of a 'glass is 1/2 full' kind of gal.

He took me to Chili’s. We sat alone in the restaurant, since it was after the noon crowd had cleared out and I ordered as cheaply as I could, I think I had soup and we started talking about our interests and what not. I found out he liked movies and even had aspirations of making a movie or writing a screenplay one day. Which at the time was exactly what I was trying to do, my internship was with a video production house.

I kinda got a little creeped out, like how did he know that I was into those things? Was he just trying to impress me? I mean, he does work at the Wal-Marts…but I went with it. He was funny, easy to talk to and surprisingly enough we had a lot in common. As I was dropping him back off at the Wal-Marts we exchange numbers and he asks if we can maybe get together that evening?

I was giddy, my little tire problem turned into meeting a guy, who didn’t seem to have any interest in raping me, murdering me and dumping my remains by the side of the road. And I actually kinda sorta liked him. (tee hee) I had those stomach flutters going on, the proverbial butterflies. I was on cloud 9, I was smitten you know all the cliches...

He called me later that night and said that his best friend (Mr. Bywater) and fiance, (Mrs. Bywater), were in town and he wanted to know if I’d be interested in going out with them and have a few drinks at a local bar. After spending my first month in Dallas sitting alone in The Dorks house I jumped at the opportunity.

We met at his apartment, and all four of us went to a little dive bar named Chase Place. He kissed me that night and I must say... I kinda liked it. The beers were flowing and we were having fun, and I didn’t feel comfortable driving home after drinking, so he offered to let me stay at his place. There was no hanky panky, I woke up the next morning and we started discussing our future.

“I’m not really the type of girl to date around, I generally just date one person. So I guess if we were going to be seeing eachother, I probably wouldn’t be seeing anyone else.” Not to mention I didn’t exactly know anyone else that I’d be dating anyway, I knew three other people in this town and I was related to all of them.

“Well I don’t really date around either,” he said. “So um…I guess that means we are...like ‘going out’?”

“Sure, sounds good….but um…what is your last name?”

“Vasey,” he said.