Wal-Mart - It's not just for shopping anymore

When I'm home to visit, my brother and I usually hit the Hutchinson Wal-Mart, often at pretty weird hours of the night. We'll roam the store, not necessarily looking for anything in particular, but just visiting and killing time. Maybe it's sad, but in Hutch at 2:30, it counts as "something to do."

Probably someone has joked about us taking up residence there, at some time or another. But what if we really did? What if we went to Wal-Mart, and never left?

I remember growing up being enchanted with the book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the 1967 Newbery-winning children's classic in which two young siblings run away from home and take up residence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a spring break experiment likely based off of fuzzy memories of the adventures of Claudia and Jamie at the Met, college student Skyler Bartels spent nearly two days living in the aisles of his neighborhood Wally World:

He lived off energy drinks, doughnuts, yogurt and Subway sandwiches.

He figures he slept four hours out of the 41 in captivity. He'd catch a few minutes whenever he could - in a Subway booth or a restroom stall, which isn't recommended, especially with the night stockers bursting in every five minutes.

'I got to the point,' he said, 'where I was adept at falling asleep on the toilet seat, which sounds kind of weird.'

The best place for dozing was lawn and garden, where the lights weren't so bright. Nobody worked there between 2 and 4 a.m. Bartels found a lawn chair, kicked back and wondered how life could be better.

Life would be perfect, he discovered, without the worker who showed up before dawn to stock plants. Bartels hopped up and pretended to be looking for home patio furniture.

(Full coverage available at Google News)

In a statement worthy of Bones McCoy, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sharon Weber insisted, "We're a retailer, not a hotel."

Tip of the hat to Michael for the heads-up!