This year has been nothing but mistake after mistake for me. I’ve made bad choices many times. But enough about me trying to make my life sound really depressing.

It is pride that will end us.

And I’m holding onto my pride this time. The ball is in your court.

But there are certain cities in the south that a certain store called Target is beginning to erect its super centers in. Target does not supply gas or tires or subway (though some do have a Star Bucks available for your coffee needs). But where Target lacks in carrying everything a family could need, it makes up in class. The bathrooms at Target are clean, the aisles are not cramped because the store isn’t trying to fit every product conceivable inside, and the colors are less neutral and insight more of an image.

The point that I think I’m trying to get at is this: I grew up Wal-Mart. I grew up commuting into a different city to get the things I needed to live and Wal-Mart was where we went. There was no other alternative if we wanted to get back home in time for the ritual of Sunday afternoon nap.

And then Target came on the scene.

I moved into the city a little under four years ago. And I’ve changed drastically. I’d like to think that I’m relatively the same person, but I know I am not. That difference is clearly identified in my choice of shopping store.

I am no longer Wal-Mart, I am Target. I’m not looking to get in, get EVERYTHING, and get out. Instead, I have time to get in, shop around, maybe go somewhere else and find exactly what I’m looking for, not an acceptable replacement.

To further illustrate my changes, I should note that the second I enter a Wal-Mart parking lot, I get angry. My college American History referred to keeping the power out of the hands of the “unwashed masses” when he spoke of the way the constitution was written. Then he asked to raise our hand if we’d been to Wal-Mart. Living in the south, everyone in the class had been to a Wal-Mart. We aren’t Paris Hilton.

He nodded his head at us, said “unwashed masses,” smiled, and continued teaching.

I get angry when I walk amongs the unwashed masses. It’s wrong that I feel that way. I hate that I feel that way, but I am Target and there is an unspoken war between us. We are both super centers. We both try to fulfill the needs of the people. But our stores have different audiences to entertain and unfortunately those of us that shop at Target feel superior.

It is stupid to identify ourselves by the stores we shop at, but we do.

So I forced myself to walk around a Wal-Mart Friday night. I forced myself to stay, to find something redeeming about the people inside so that I could identify with them.

That thing came in the shape of a little girl who was singing a nursey rhyme. She could not have been more than three years old. But there she was singing “Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

And I realized that maybe I am Target and she’s being raised Wal-Mart, but that maybe we all have the same humble beginnings, that there is common ground in ourselves.

There is nothing innately deep or profound in that realization. They are shopping centers. We buy things, and then we go home to our lives where we face our families, adversity, hate, love, and tragedy. Target and Wal-Mart are simple ways to identify ourselves, just some constant that we have already identified in our lives. And maybe one grows angry when they visit the other because that constant is upset. That balance is tipped.

At the end of the day, we are human, and those labels we place on ourselves don’t matter. We have to try to live together, no matter what the icon on our grocery bags is.