Kmart shopper for life

The last three weeks of my life have been marked with a trip to my much beloved Riverside Kmart to scour the shelves for the last blue light special deals of my life.

My favorite store is closing marking an end to a tradition that goes all the way back to the 80s. This is the tradition of shopping at Kmart and not giving a fuck who knows about it.

I have a lot of Kmart memories with my mom. Most of them aren’t fun. I remember being bored most of the time. I remember crawling into the middle of the racks of clothes to hide beneath the criss-cross of metal bars, just waiting to jump out and scare some unsuspecting 40-year-olds.

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Looking back, I remember Kmart to be a gigantic place. So big in fact, that I got lost and once had to have an employee call my mom’s name over the loud speaker, so that she could pick up her unruly child near the Slush Puppy machine in front of the entire store.

I had better memories of my dad at Kmart. The Huber Heights store had a diner in the back, and there was a wheel you could spin to possibly win a free ice cream sundae. It was all I wanted in life when I was 8. I would fake being sick, and my stay-at-home dad would lug me and my gross twin sisters up to Kmart for a magical afternoon.

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As an adult I enjoyed Kmart because I’m cheap god damn it. I need cheap clothes and I need weird clothes. One thing that really came in handy was how many jokes I was able to get out of the Riverside Kmart in particular.

Thank you for everything sweet Kmart.