Now That's Something You Don't See Every Day

I've mentioned before how much I love going to our 'hood Wal-Mart. In fact, I'm there just about every other day. Yesterday was no exception. Last night, I needed to pick up some more AirBorne for the 'Rents and me, so after I got home from the very cool birthday party we attended, I changed clothes and ran up to my favorite store. It was drizzling rain so I was scurrying in from the parking lot, and just a I almost reached the "enter" doors, I saw a man pushing a man pushing a shopping cart loaded up with a Dell computer out of the "exit" door. Now, ordinarily a man pushing a shopping cart with a computer wouldn't catch my eye. But this man was different. He had a set of car floor mats on top of the box and was trying to shoplift a pretty good sized box containing a computer. I know what you're thinking - "Now, Puddin, how on earth do you know this man was trying to steal the computer?" Well, I know because just as I got a few feet away from the man, a plainclothes store detective had the man in an arm lock and was asking repeatedly where the man's receipt was.

I walked on into the store and joined the crowd of curious onlookers and we all just stood back and watched. The detective struggled a little bit with the man, but was able to keep him in an arm lock -- all the while the man kept saying he didn't know what happened to the receipt; the receipt that he allegedly just received from the cashier probably 60 seconds earlier. Another store person had come up and called for backup and two pretty good sized guys from various parts of the store came running up and they got the guy into a room just inside of the doorway. I bought my AirBorne and was out of there in probably two minutes, and just as I was leaving I saw Jefferson County's Finest roll up in a cruiser with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

Looking back at the incident, I can't really say I was afraid. I'm pretty sure the man wasn't carrying a gun or other weapon, and was only pissed off at the store detective, not the other shoppers. But it was pretty exciting; definitely Something That You Don't See Every Day.