The Shopping Cart

The Shopping Cart

So, my wife and I are coming out of the grocery store and the two women in front of us take a bag out of their shopping cart and abandon their cart right there… in the front doorway.

I mean, RIGHT SMACK in the front doorway, where everyone enters and exits the store. Six feet of spacefour feet of it now taken up by their shopping cart parked sideways across it.

And walk away, like it's nothing.

Huh?

My neck gets red and the line of it rises to my face, and I start stuttering.

“Why, you …” I won't let you know what else I said. Modesty forbids. And also, just in case my pastor hears about this article.

But, the racks of carts are about two feet away to the side of the door. All these two had to do was slightly push it.

Just slightly… TWO FEET AWAY.

TWO!

Really. The cart has wheels on it designed just for that purpose (just in case anyone out there reading this doesn't know that yet. Engineers stayed up late at night designing them for peak performance and maximum coefficient of rolling resistance down to 0.001 frictionless co-glide.) So, you don't have to be a weightlifter to pick it up.

Don't have to track down a Boy Scout to put it in the rack for you.

Don't have to write an editorial and send it to 'Text the Times,' to complain that there wasn't a store employee right there-Johnny on the spot-ready to read your mind and then cater to your whim to abandon it wherever everyone was walking and heft it into the rack for you, because you are too delicate a flower to bother.

It wouldn't have cost those two women a dime to do the right thing.

However, now, everyone has to POLE VAULT over their cart, sitting sideways in the door. Because of these two nincompoops.

Anywho, I standing there and my wife grabs my arm as my eyes pop out from the rising blood pressure slamming into my brain cells behind them, because she knows what is fixing to happen.

“Don't,” she says, as I struggle with the urge to yell out across the parking lot to the oppressors, “HEY, THANKS FOR LEAVING YOUR CART IN EVERYONE'S WAY! HAVE A NICE DAY!”

So, instead, I push it to the side so we and others can get by.

And, you know, it didn't hurt my self-esteem a bit to do the work that the other two SHOULD have done.

But then, I don't feel the need to punish the public at large, as some seem to do these days. Some want to get back at others just because they might have had a bad day, or week, or month, or year, or even, a life.

The situation forced me to recall a tip one of my bosses gave me: “If you want to be a success in anything, you have to be a better than others.”

Now, don't misunderstand me here: That does NOT mean a better person-all of us are equal. It means you have to extend yourself to do things that others think they are too important or too good to do. When, in fact, they are either too arrogant or just plain crude to do.

You know? Like putting your shopping cart back in the correct place?

You feel me, as they say?

Luke 16:10 puts it this way: “Whoever is faithful with very little will also be faithful with much.”

And putting a shopping cart away properly is a small thing. Not a big one.

I know that.

But, it is a TELLING thing. And that's the whole point. It tells others that you just can't get over yourself.

Case in point: The same day-Saturdayright in front of the Walmart main entrance, a truck stopped on the frontage road, and two girls in the car behind the truck crossed the DOUBLEYELLOW LINE into the oncoming traffic lane, passed the truck and entered sideways into the Walmart lot with traffic coming at them from all directions like a swarm of angry bees.

Blocking oncoming traffic lanes… blocking a door with a shopping cart. It's all the same thing: No thought process involved with either situation.

Just pure ego… just, “I'm better than everyone else and I can't be bothered to do the right thing, because that might inconvenience me. And after all… it’s really all about ME, isn't it?”

Ri-i-i-i-ght.

It's your life and everyone else is just passing through it.

Of course, in the case of those two girls, it could have meant death… but let's not quibble over a small thing like that; you know, like the irreplaceable and precious gift of life?

Just sayin'.

So, we drive on, having witnessed the near-death scenario at Walmart, and just a few blocks on, a driver pulls out of a side road, right in front of us-with not the slightest inclination of looking either way for traffic before doing so.

They say things happen in threes.

I hope that's right.

By Robert L. Hall