Today I was out doing some chores for my mom. Just picking up some stuff to fix her bike and get some groceries for the next day or two. I went to Walmart first, for the bike parts. I don’t really like Walmart, so I head to a Publix nearby to grab the food. I got there, had some delicious pork tenderloin at those little “meal station” things they have in the front right of Publixes. The potatoes were too hot and I almost burned my mouth. I went on and got my bananas and yogurt and other healthy stuff. I’m at the very end of my shopping looking for raisin bread for mom. I look down.

 

My shopping cart is gone…

 

I saw a guy on the aisle when I stopped by the bread, but I didn’t look at him, I don’t even know what color shirt he had on. His cart, with some plastic cups and plates, is still in the aisle, facing the opposite direction of me. He would have had to come around to get my cart and walk off with the load of yogurt and fruit. I start wandering around the store quickly mumbling “What the fuck?” under my breath while overly exercised soccer moms glare at me if they hear me. SOme glare at me just because I seem to have a purpose to my movement, I’m not sure why that bothers them, but it seems to. I go toward the milk corner, but no luck, everyone there has their own carts and they look at me untrusting because of how studiously I examine their carts.

That would be a great prank wouldn’t it? You see a friend in a grocery store, but they haven’t seen you, so you just duck your head and grab something big from their cart and hurry away. How would they react? You aren’t really stealing anything. They don’t own it yet. Maybe it is something you were looking for. Is there a precedent for what to do when someone takes something that isn’t yours?

So, I am heading back to the bread aisle to stand next to the cart for when the guy realizes his cart is not with him at check-out. For a second I see my familiar pile of yogurt, bananas, and Greenwise brand cookies. I walk up to the man, and politely say “Hey, were you just in the bread aisle? Cause you have my cart.” I’ve never seen a man so embarrassed and flustered. I would have felt bad for him, if he hadn’t just taken my cart. He was mortified. Not so much as to stop him from getting the wine he wanted from that aisle, but enough so that this story would never be told except by me, over and over and over again.

 

This really made my day so much better.