The Day I Scared a Stranger.

 The other day the boys and I ran into Walmart for a couple missing ingredients I needed for my state challenge. In proper Whitney fashion, I ended up humiliating myself within 60 seconds of entering the building.

The kids and I came in chatting and walked over to pick out a buggy. Of course the one I chose made a horrible screeching noise and had two wheels that wouldn’t spin, so I turned around to grab another.

I then sauntered over to sanitize the handle and there was a large display near the sanitizing wipes that my boys were standing beside. When I approached the wipes I knew the boys were behind me, so I thought I’d be funny and make them laugh.

As I snapped a wipe out of the canister, I inhaled and started to speak. As soon as the words started spilling from my mouth a man passed opposite me and looked over to smile kindly. But I’d already started talking. It was too late.

In my most sinister voice with a ghoulish look on my face, I held up my wipe and growled, “BE GONE CORONAVIRUS!” as my eyes locked onto his and I stood wiping down my buggy. 

He kind of flinched and stopped pushing his buggy for a quick second as his jolly smile slowly fell into a look of confusion mixed with fear. He was startled to say the least.

It all happened so fast. The chance of us locking eyes at the precise moment I declared the riddance of coronavirus was almost kismet. There was nothing that could have been done to stop it.

He never saw my children because they were standing behind the display and he was on the other side. All he saw was a crazed, lone red-head who looked to be possessed, calling him the source of the world wide pandemic.

I wanted to simultaneously explain myself and crawl into a hole .

I wanted to grab my kids out from behind the divider and and say, “Haha, that was for them, not you! See? I have kids! I don’t think you’re coronavirus! I bet you've never even HAD coronavirus. I promise I’m not a nut!”

But I didn’t. I looked down, pushed my buggy and RAN.

And here’s the kicker - my kids had been talking to each other and didn’t even hear my malevolent declaration. Instead of innocently making them laugh, I accidentally scared the wits out of a stranger.

I can only imagine his side of the story.