Friday night fun at Wal-Mart

It's 11 o'clock on a Friday night, and I'm sitting on a stone wall waiting for a bus to take me to Wal-Mart.\nThere is something very wrong with this.\nAll around me are hundreds of fellow college students eagerly anticipating transport to a giant retail store. Somehow, I didn't think my first weekend night at IU would turn out like this.\nI'm not even sure why I'm waiting for the bus. \nFor one, Wal-Mart is a little intimidating to me.\nIt's not because of the size of the place or the overcrowding. No. Far from it.\nIt's because I know that somewhere in that gargantuan store, a giant bouncing smiley face is lurking around rolling back prices at its own discretion. I swear that if I ever catch a glimpse of that horrid thing, I'm running straight to the sporting goods department and buying the biggest rifle they have.\nI don't care if giant Wal-Mart bouncing smiley faces are on the endangered species list. Wal-Mart just isn't big enough for the both of us. And that's saying something. What, I don't know.\nI've missed the first bus to Wal-Mart. I was standing on the street corner with about 50 other students when the bus pulled right beside us and stopped.\nIt was just teasing us, though, because as soon as the first few people started walking up to the bus, it started up again and turned the street toward the front of the dorm. Suddenly, almost everyone on that corner bolted after that bus like it was a one-way trip to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory where Oompah-Loompahs are actually the secret ingredient to Runts candy.\nAnother way of putting it is that they ran after that bus like a peanut butter sandwich after jelly. Peanut butter just doesn't taste right without jelly.\nYet another way of putting it is that they chased that bus like a deer after grass.\nOK, I'm going to stop that. \nWell, there's no way on Oprah Winfrey's green earth I'm going to run after a bus heading to Wal-Mart. There are just some things I won't do. So, I missed the first bus and found myself waiting for the second bus to come by.\nAnd waiting and waiting. Wal-Mart just isn't worth that kind of time. All I need is a pair of scissors and some loose-leaf paper.\nBut there was some force compelling me to go to Wal-Mart. I believe it was the ghost of Sam Walton, who if still alive, would be rich enough to buy a country and rename it Wal-Mart. \nA place where giant smiley faces roam free amid the beautiful landscape of vast parking lots and fast-food restaurants. A place where food, furniture and frying pans live happily together only aisles apart.\nFinally, I just got bored waiting, stood up, and walked back to my giant smiley face-free dorm room knowing that at least there I would be safe.