WASHINGTON - Today President Obama, in an impromptu shopping excursion, asked Wal-Mart employee Gail Murdoch: "Fans, lightbulbs, ok fine: where are the damn tampons?"

Secret Service Agent in Charge Martin Gartner explained: "The President is wondering where you keep female hygiene products."

To which Murdoch responded: "Aisle 5, there over between fishing bait and garter belts."

The President, thus directed, retrieved the product for his wife -- stopped in the gun department to purchase a .306 Remington rifle, to the encouragement of the assembled secret service detail (but without ammunition) -- and then checked out and exited the store.

"This was a completely spontaneous shopping excursion," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. "Exactly the kind of excursion that causes press secretaries to either resign or get sentenced to 18 months in some minimum security Federal penitentiary," Earnest joked.

Everyone laughed.