Admittedly, I can be a snob about certain things in life, namely fast food and Walmart.
The Walmart avoidance is mainly due to long, slow checkout lines, and the fact there is usually at least one unruly child throwing some sort of tantrum.
But when you’re shopping for a wedding, you have to go to reasonable places for things you never needed before- like spools and yards and feet of RIBBON. I have lists of our sudden ribbon needs, such as for the program, bouquets…before this planning process, I probably purchased ribbon maybe once, if ever. Anyway, so Mom and I decide to head over to the local Walmart ( ew) to try to purchase what will hopefully be the last of many ribbon purchases.
I was immediately turned off by the scores of cars outside and the lack of clean-looking shopping carts. (Dingy. Ew, ew) So when Mom went to get a shopping cart, I had my reservations. After pushing the thing down a few aisles, I finally dared myself to see if our cart also contained some sort of garbage product as the others seemed to. It did. A clothes hanger and a piece of round cardboard. (Tacky.)
At the sewing/craft center, I I needed this one type of blue ribbon. Walmart had one left on the shelves. It was missing the back of the cardboard spool that contained the barcode. I felt justified in my lack of respect for Walmart, yes I did. Look how they take care of their merchandise. Mom said we may have a problem at check out, but we would try and buy the ribbon anyway.
After waiting in a slow line, it was our turn to pay. I put all the ribbon spools- even the barcode-lacking one- onto the conveyer belt and was checking to see if we had missed any in the cart. Of course, I saw the nasty trash again. Some random hanger, hmmph. And that pointless cardboard circle….
Hmmm. I held the circle up. It had a barcode and a description-

1917SFS LT BLUE
5/8″ x 18ft
100% polyester

I held the piece up to our ghetto fabulous, backless ribbon spool. Perfect Match. I placed it on top of the backless spool, watched it go through the scanner, paid for it, and felt a little weirded out. It was a Walmart miracle, yes it was.