I’m Just Curious: Thank you! Thank you!

by Debbie Walker

Please bear with me and yet another local article about the lock down at Wal-Mart in the Newport/Palmyra store on Friday, August 19. My big thank yous to the Maine state troopers, local sheriff’s department, Newport police, Wal-Mart staff and management, Dunkin’ Donuts staff, first responders and anyone that I may have left out of this.

With all the craziness in this world today it was wonderful that the whole situation was taken care of with no shots fired. They were able to talk to a distressed, armed man and bring everything to an end, and send the man off for the help he obviously needed.

My friend Kathy and I went in to Wal-mart just before 10 a.m., we were in there for four things. Got right in there, found the things we wanted and were ready to head out. We were headed for the cashiers when a man said, “No need to hurry ladies, we are now on lock down”. Lock down!!!!! You’re kidding, but looking at the people milling around the doors told us he was telling the truth.

Soooo, what to do, so we walked around and the cart grew from four things to a cart load! Someone made the crack that maybe this was Wal-mart’s new marketing plan! I saw a man coming down an aisle with a flat loaded with chairs, didn’t take long to figure out this was going to be a while. So we went to Dunkin’ Donuts for some lunch. They were doing their part of passing out goodies to folks, too.

Most everyone we saw seemed to be trying to make the best out of a bad situation. You have to know no one planned on all that time in there. The staff went around with a cart with water and crackers. Someone else was passing out crayons and paper to the children. How people handle others in strange situations is always of interest to me. I was quite impressed with all the professionalism of all involved.

“Bless his heart,” there was one man in there that had left his dog in the car for a short trip into the store. Needless to say three hours later he is upset. It was towards the end of the ordeal the troopers took him out to bring in the dog and got him water. Kathy and I were feeling bad because that could have been us. Every other day last week we had Toby, her dachshund, with us. Guess we learned an important lesson. Sometimes things just don’t go as planned.
And believe it or not, after spending three hours in Wal-mart on Friday, I still have to go back to do our real grocery shopping. However, I think I will head for Waterville this week.

I’m just curious if we ever show people our true gratitude. Contact me at dwdaffy@yahoo.com. Sub line: Thank you. Thank you and looking forward to hearing from you!