I have a confession to make.

Friday I about committed mass homicide. I'm pretty sure my lesson plans involving the death penalty would be far more interesting had I actually murdered someone, but now students will just have to deal with my hypothetical scenario, a "What-if" that could/should/would have occured if my wife and my daughter weren't with me.

You see, yesterday I nearly killed about twenty "Blue-Hairs."

What is a Blue Hair you may ask?

A Blue Hair is a person who is so old that their hair no longer fits into mainstream categories of silver, gray, black, or any other natural color. Instead, their hair is a mottled collection of various colors that render their hair, for lack of a better term, blue as a Smurf's hiney.

Let me set the premise for this near tragedy. This entire week we have been out of school because of the tremendous ice storm that struck the entire region last weekend. Normally I curse Mother Nature for not providing us with any snow days, but this is our second 4 day snow-induced break of the Winter Season. And quite honestly, being stuck at home for that many days in a row had already set my nerves on edge. Combining that with the prospect of another couple of snow-induced days at home with the forecast of more snow this weekend, I was ready to pop.

I love my wife. I love my daughter. We have spent a lot of quality time together. But I needed OUT.

So like a fool I thought Wal-Mart would be a good place to go. We needed to pick up some food for Audrey, and some food for ourselves.

Too bad the entire free world was shopping at the Webb City Supercenter at the same time I was.

Oh wait, let me clarify that statement. Every BLUEHAIR in the free world was shopping at the Webb City Supercenter at the same time I was.

Here is the moment in time where my life could have dramatically changed:

Aisle 13. The tomato sauce/soup/mexican/chinese/ethnic food aisle. My wife and I wanted some fajita mix. Every single blue hair in the world was trying to get into that particular aisle at the same time. The traffic was overwhelming, as 1.4 million Blue Hairs, each with that carts filled with Depends and Ensure Energy Drinks, trudged along at a staggeringly slow .5 mph. Natalie and Audrey went first- Nat's daring dash across the double aisle left my heart in my throat, but she made it just fine until she hit traffic. She looked back at me and waited for me to come....but I was trapped. No way could I cross without getting hit.

There were just too many Blue Hairs, all of them trying to go in the same little spot at the same time. Natalie and Audrey got swept up in the tide, struggling in a futile effort to fight their way back to me with about as much chance for success as a salmon swimming UP Niagara Falls.

"Chad!" She called out to me, her fingers outstretched to me in a panic. I could hear Audrey howl as a group of Blue-Hairs brushed against her little face....the Blue-Hairs seemingly moved as one...a silent wrinkled tide....all of them heading for the same cans of Tomato sauce, ravenously scooping them up as though Saturday's predicted snowstorm would be the end of all life on this earth.

I had had enough. In my mind, I quickly imagined my best chance of reaching them....I had to act fast...they were being pushed further and further away from me...and what's worse, they had passed the fajita sauce....which was the entire purpose of their dangerous journey down that aisle!

I could not let their sacrifice be in vain!

Thoughts of grabbing a frozen turkey and clubbing these geezers out of my way danced across my mind, but I dismissed that idea when I saw how much hairspray some of these women used in their blue-beehive hair-dos. Frozen poultry would be rendered ineffective against their dos.

I also imagined grabbing a box of corn dogs and stabbing them in their tiny, ancient, withered hearts, but that would have been too slow.

So instead I did the best thing possible.

I back tracked about twenty feet, trusting Natalie's strong survival instinct to keep them long enough for my plan to work.

I ran to the nearest price checking computer and grabbed the microphone marked "employees only." I cleared my throat and calmly said over the speakers

"Attention all Senior Citizens. There is a 40 percent sale on all diet, sugar free, fat free Metamucil in aisle 443."

Fiber. Laxatives.

YES!

As one, the blue-hair zombies turned and silently left the fajita aisle. Natalie and Audrey were saved, and just in the nick of time, too.....a particularly ancient old geezer, Oldy McCorpse was his name, I believe, had mistaken Audrey's sippy cup for his denture jar and had placed his false teeth on top of Audrey's cup.

I hurdled across the frozen burrito case and scooped up my two girls in my arms. A disaster had been averted thanks to my quick thinking, Natalie's bravery, and my unyielding belief in the thought that no matter how old a person becomes, they can't turn down a big savings on fiber laxatives.

Proudly my family and I marched to the fajita mix and grabbed not one but TWO packets. We didn't really need to, but screw it.

It was our day.



PS I completely made up about 90 percent of this story. The names of the principle actors have been changed to protect the innocent.