Kmart?

It's a hard habit to break. Kmart was a great place for a kid from the sticks to shop. Giant bags of fresh popped popcorn, blue frozen slushie drinks, a mechanical horse you rode for a nickel, goldfish, bouncing balls, whole aisles of cheap plastic toys..... life could not have been better for a four year old. Like Woolworth's, Kmart was the big time. The big city. Dad could buy an oil filter for the Pontiac, mom could find a new nightie, and if I was basically good but begged mercilessly, I could wind up with something to shut me up.

Over the years Kmart has remained a stop along my shopping route, picking up on-sale laundry soap here and a tee-shirt there. Martha Stewart cafe curtains still hang in my kitchen, right next to the Williams-Sonoma bowls. Doesn't bother me to mix Kmart jeans with Nordstrom sandals in the same outfit. But I do prefer to be the one doing the mixing. Today my husband and I stopped by the newly remodeled Kmart for some sale goodies and found the Internet Cafe. ??????? What sort of odd parallel universe had we stumbled into? Kmart Internet Cafe? Ooooooo, with free printing! So the hub says, "This is not Kmart." I answered, "Yes, it is." inspecting the machines. "Three stations out of six are out of order." Now that's MY Kmart.