Correct me if I am wrong, here … but I truly believe that Wal-Mart is one of the top three saddest places on Earth.

Oh, I know some of you bleeding hearts may bring up Uganda or possibly the DMV, but overall … I’ve never been more depressed as I am when I walk out of Wal-Mart.

Have you seen these people?

Not only the clientele, but the employees themselves have this aura of desperation clinging to them like a sticky film. It’s a never ending stream of depression and hopelessness. I can almost imagine them all walking around saying, “Oh God. This is my life. Help me.”

It’s just sad.

My mom and I were wandering around in Wal-Mart one day. We had actually gone in to make ONE purchase, and not spend $120 on crap, as we are known to do. We were buying yoga mats.

We had recently decided to take up yoga together and this was right after our first class. With our newfound enthusiasm for fitness, we darted straight for Wal-Mart on our way out of the best yoga class ever. This, of course, was before we encountered, what I affectionately refer to as, the Yoga Nazi. Who, though she gave us more of a workout than we were expecting, did not deter us from our quest to become yoga masters … though in our third class with said Nazi, I fell twice and my mom fell once – unfortunately landing on the woman behind her.

Hey. It was a tough pose. Give us a break.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

To the Yoga Nazi’s credit, she merely looked at us and smiled. Although, I must say, it is kind of hard to NOT smile at me and my mom when we are together. We are just so funny and lovable. You’d have to be a real jerk not to like us.

Just saying.

Anyway … I digress …

So, me and my mom, with our brand new yoga mats in hand, were walking through the cosmetics section trying desperately to get to the long lines that awaited us at the registers, when suddenly I see this … woman. She was heading straight for us.

How can I describe her?

Her hair was of the bottle blond variety often seen on older women. You know the type that is so over-processed it now has the texture and consistency of cotton candy? It was short, but poofy and totally out of control on her head. Like it had a life of its own and had important business to do that did not involve her.

She had apparently applied her makeup in a very dim room.

She was wearing bright blue eye shadow, darkly plunked onto the entire lid of both eyes.

I wasn’t even aware that they still MADE eye shadow in this shade, but there it was, on her face, reminding me of Mimi from Drew Carey.

Now, I don’t want to say that she was wearing false eyelashes, but these things couldn’t have been real … and if they were, she had apparently used an entire tube of mascara on each eye.

It seemed that she boldly drew in each eyebrow with either a sharpie or black sidewalk chalk, slightly angling each one towards her nose, giving her a permanent angry scowl.

The icing on the cake, for me, was the blush / lipstick combo, which were both of an orangey-red hue and fearlessly applied generously to both lips and cheekbones.

As she furiously made her way towards us, I leaned into my mom and whispered in her ear, “Look Mum, a clown!”

I resisted the urge to point as I said it.

Obviously, pointing was not necessary.

We had the decency not to laugh right at the poor woman. I mean, that would have just been rude. We instead stared each other in the eyes giving that ‘Did you just f*cking SEE that’ look we have perfected over the years.

Well, between Bozo and the 17 welfare moms with their 8 kids apiece who constantly waver between running rampant through the store and screaming at the top of their lungs while mommy buys diapers in bulk … the whole experience is always, depending on my mood, either hysterically funny or morbidly depressing.

I guess we should walk out of that place thanking God that we are who we are.