The Shopping Cart Adventures

While browsing the isles in the grocery store I saw a woman with a small child sitting playing in a buggy making spaceship noises. Oddly, it is not something I see or at least don’t notice children doing much anymore. Children don’t need to entertain themselves using imagination. Now children sit in the buggy plugged into a phone or tab. Watching this child suddenly propelled me back in time, sending thoughts to a place that is full of imagination and wonder. A profound simple and magical memory of being a child danced its way into my mind. I remember as a child enjoying that weekly trip to the grocery store, a place of great adventure and magic, one where I could take a ride onto a spaceship, step into a portal to another universe or simply ride a magical boat set on a special voyage. My imagination could transform the shopping cart into anything and take me on any adventure. The bottom section of the shopping cart was the best place to be. In the bottom of the cart, I felt sheltered from the world. A shadowed place, in the basement of a carriage lay my own little world.

Maybe such childhood moments led to my teenage fascination with hijacking small shopping carts. During a long punk phase of life, some friends and I found it amusing to steal those small shopping carts you can get a pharmacies like CVS . I remember when I first saw one of those cute little shopping carts. I knew it had to be mine. This sparked the super-secret nighttime operations of stalking the pharmacy parking lot until one stray buggy was finally left alone in the dark parking lot, waiting helplessly to become our victim. The first kidnapping was rocky. We took my small Chevy Nova and it was not a quick drive by but an awkward drawn out situation of trying to figure out how to get the shopping cart into the back seat of my car. It would not fit in the trunk. We would not admit defeat. Luckily, in my small southern town there isn’t much threat of being busted in the well-lit and completely abandoned parking lot at 2 am. Most cops are sitting off somewhere together taking shit and avoiding work. Eventually we reigned supreme over our task and took the shopping cart. Over time, we gathered a decent amount of carts that served many varying purposes. I miss the days of the wonderful shopping cart adventures.