Weird Times at Walmart

So I teach at the local Saturday School, which is at the Muslim American Society (MAS) center in Urbana. Anyway, I teach second graders Arabic and we split them up based on their skills. I specifically teach three girls: Lana, Seerah, and Areen. They’re extremely adorable and cute but trying to get second graders to focus and making them repeat after you so they can pronounce the letters and words correctly really does test your patience sometimes. So, in order to get them to focus, I told them that if we finished the lesson, I would get them candy. I genuinely did not think they would be able to finish the lesson because of the fact that they get distracted so easily, but surprisingly, they did.




Fast forward a week later, and I meet with them again. Right before we’re about to start the lesson, they ask whether or not I have their candy. I, of course, completely forgot about the candy because it was a pretty stressful week of school, so buying candy was the last thing on my mind. Anyway, I made some excuse about how since they were the only ones that were getting candy I had to give it to them in private so the other kids wouldn’t get jealous. My plan was after I teach them the lesson, during their break, I would go buy their candy.




MAS is in the most shadiest part of Urbana . It’s like in the middle of this forest kind of area and all the houses around it are these creepy little trailer homes which all look abandoned and everyone that lives nearby is white, but like they’re all like lumberjacks with trucks. Anyway, the closest store was Walmart. I had never been to the Walmart in Urbana before, but I didn’t think it would be too different from the Walmarts in Savoy and Champaign. I was extremely wrong.




The first thing that I noticed was that it was organized differently than the other Walmarts I’ve been too-- the major difference was the fact that the clearance section was near the door of the store. The clearance section is never there in the other Walmarts, it’s always next to the birthday cards and stuff. I also noticed like the people around me that were in the store, were all these white people wearing those weird camo hunting jackets and it felt so weird. It was almost like you know in horror movies when they go to a store and everything seems out of place but you can’t seem to put your finger on it. That’s what it felt like. I like was worried that someone would yell at me or say something because I got more stares than I usually get when I go shopping, so I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible before anything bad happened. So I like rushed to get the candy and got out of there as quickly as possible.