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"Save Money. Live Better." is Walmart's current slogan but it might be time for an upgrade. The huge stores are known for good prices and carrying pretty much everything a person could want from food to fashion. Err, well, fashion might be stretching it but clothes, certainly. They carry large items you don't find in most little stores. Including cradles and anything else a person would need from before they take their first steps until they breathe their last.
Now they've gone one step beyond. Or, actually, two steps beyond. Introducing the Walmart casket and urn.
Considering what a ripoff coffins tend to be — if you've never had to buy one before, when the time comes buy two because you'll need one for yourself when the sticker shock kicks in — it makes all the sense in the world that Walmart would finally get in the game.
There are 15 models currently offered, from the Sienna Bronze ($2,899.00) to the White Haven Steel ($895.00) Don't worry, though — there'll be no awkward moment of having to steer a shopping cart around a grieving widow on Aisle 13. You actually can't drive down and pick one up at your neighborhood Wallies. They're only available online. And have to be delivered to a certified funeral home.
The real afterlife savings take off with their selection of funeral urns. Even at the high end, the Floral Blush Swirl Cloisonne model will only run you $214.05 (Love the extra nickel — what's that about?) Or you can really show you didn't care by grabbing the Copper Deluxe Stainless Steel urn for just $94.05 (There's that nickel again...) Just like the coffins, you can only get your urns online BUT they will ship these right to your door. (In case you're in favor of the DIY cremation, I guess.)
If a casket or an urn IS the last item you're picking up for a poor departed Walmart shopper, make sure you choose wisely: Just like death itself, there's a No Return policy on both caskets and urns.
Enough. School policy, like bureaucracy, seeks its own level of ineptitude. As proven in the recent case of 6-year-old Zachary Christie of Newark, Delaware, when he was suspended from school for bringing his Cub Scout camping utensil to school. The school in question (yeah, the school, not the kid, is in question) is the Downes Elementary School in the Christina School District. It seems that Zachary, in a fit of youthful Scouting zeal, brought his shiny new eating implement — a neato combo fork-spoon-bottle opener-knife — with him to school with the idea he'd show it off while eating his lunch with it.
Instead, he was confronted by a teacher as he got off the bus, who asked to see what the boy was holding in his hand. The potentially deadly super spork was handed over to the school principal and BAM — Zero Tolerance went in to action immediately! No warning. No phone call. Zachary was suspended from school pending a disciplinary hearing.
What?!
In a world of drive-by shootings, teen pregnancies, and unsafe sugary soft drinks, "the system" has the time, dedication and interest in clamping down on enthusiastic Cub Scouts and their eating tools? That's great. Even if the school has the wisdom — in the face of the media/blogging/twitterstorm that's currently raining down on it — to back off on this one, the damage done in terms of time and manpower wasted, not to mention the trauma of exposure that sweet little Zachary has had to undergo is ludicrous.
In the end, what we've discovered is that "zero tolerance" is simply a way for those who are supposed to be in charge to, instead, simply take the path of least resistance while disclaiming any responsibility for their actions. But why get down on the principal and other school district personnel for this? They are only following orders. It's maybe going a little far to equate lame school officials in suburban Delaware with military officers in Nazi Germany but hey, if the cop-out fits...
If you want to see what a renegade, reprobate young Zachary is, check out this video that this 6-year-old made, called "What Is My Job?", check out this video that Zachary made. And picture him running amok with his Cub Scout eating implement in hand.
Maybe this hoopla has you in a cage-rattling mood. If so, you can check out the Help Zachary website. There's a petition and a list of email addresses for every misguided yahoo on the Christina School District Board. Why not write them all and let them know that you've got zero tolerance for zero tolerance?
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