SLUG: A02_parking_lot_stranger
SET: A
CONCEPT: The stranger in the Walmart parking lot
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 637

A stranger got out of her own car in the Walmart parking lot last April because I was crying so hard in mine.

I need to back up and tell you how I got there.

April 11th.

Kitchen table, calculator, the little spiral notebook I use for bills.

$312 owed to the ortho on the 15th for Emma's rubber bands.

Power bill $438 on the 18th.

Car insurance on the 22nd.

Nine dollars and some change sitting in the checking account.

I ran the numbers three times because I was sure I was doing it wrong.

I was not doing it wrong.

I drove to Walmart anyway because Emma needed the rubber bands and the ortho does not care what your kitchen table calculator says.

I paid at the counter with the debit card and I held my breath the whole time the little machine was thinking.

It went through.

I do not know how, but it went through.

I made it to the car before I broke.

I sat in the driver seat with the receipt crumpled in my lap and I cried the ugly kind of crying, the kind where your whole chest shakes and you can't hear anything except your own breathing.

The person parked next to me got out of her own car.

She knocked on my window and I rolled it down because I did not have the energy to pretend I was okay.

She said honey whatever it is you don't have to carry it in a parking lot by yourself.

I have thought about that sentence every single day since.

She would not leave.

She stood there in the sun with her purse on her shoulder and she pulled out her phone and she showed me the numbers landing on it.

Little deposits, one after another, sitting in a list on her screen.

She said honey the whole thing runs off the house wifi and about twenty minutes to set it up on a Sunday.

She said her daughter set hers up the same way.

She said if I had a phone and wifi I could do it too.

I wrote the name of the setup video on the back of the Walmart receipt with an eyeliner pencil because I did not have a pen.

I still have that receipt.

I set the little phone thing up the next morning before church.

Barely paid attention to it for the first couple of weeks because life got in the way.

Then the numbers started showing up.

Small at first.

A hundred and change one week.

Six hundred the next.

Then $1,317 landed on a Friday morning while I was rinsing a coffee cup.

I set the cup down in the sink and I just stood there with the water still running.

Last Friday it was $1,502.

Same sender line every time.

I make coffee before I open the phone now because I already know what the number is going to look like.

Emma's rubber bands are paid.

The power bill is paid on the day it is due instead of the day before they shut it off.

I put things in the cart at Walmart now and I keep them in the cart.

I do not put anything back on the shelf anymore.

I have not sat in that parking lot crying since April.

I think about that woman all the time.

I do not know her name.

I did not think to ask, and by the time my head cleared she was already pulling out of her spot.

If she is reading this somehow, thank you.

If you are the one sitting in the parking lot right now with a receipt in your lap and the ugly crying in your chest, tap the button under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one she showed me.

If you have a phone and wifi you can do it too.

Pass it on to somebody who needs it.
