The Carts

November 12, 2013

Written by Marykate O’Malley, mother of three wonderful children, Gladwyne, PA

 

The shopping carts. I let my crew each select an item when we go to the store. And they take full advantage – Tastycakes, cookies, “fruit snacks”. And why call them fruit snacks. We all know they aren’t fruit. They are snacks. Candy snacks. It doesn’t help. And they like to push their own carts. When my 8 year old son takes the metal wheel of a shopping cart, something in him shifts and suddenly where aisles once stood he sees the long expanse of the Indy 500. Pedestrians and Christmas displays are like obstacles in one of his video games, earning coins as he breezes past each one at a terrifying clip. He takes corners like a Ferrari or Maserati leaving carnage in his wake. And me, me. If something ever happens to me. If someday I snap and need to go away somewhere, you will know it was the shopping carts. They will say, “Well you heard what happened right? The carts“. And they will nod. And understand.

I have entered stores and left immediately because of carts. Shopping carts bring out every sibling rivalry cell in my children’s small bodies. Who gets to push the cart? So they each get their own and I am herding them through the store like a military caravan, me at the helm. Who gets to go first, them jockeying for position. It is Nascar and there are elderly people and displays piled to the ceiling and they can just see over the front of the handles, and we are racing through Giant. So we take turns, a cart rotation; child 1 gets an item, child 2, child 3. But then there is an item that is their favorite, so it should go in their cart, but it isn’t their turn. And I am negotiating. And my head is pounding, and my vision getting blurry.

And then last week… All the world is a stage and youngest child waits until the scene is set, there is a lull and the actors are poised and ready. We approach the cashier, my cart overflowth, the line is building behind us. And she plops down the Barbie princess movie. “I want that for my pick” she declares boldly.  And then, “no sweetie, this can go on your Christmas list”. And “but I  want it”. And no. And guns are drawn at the border in the ultimate show down between mother and child. And the walls of the Giant, where my oldest thinks everything should be Giant and it is misleading to sell tiny items in a Giant store, are starting to close in on me. And then she spots a kit-kat and I am thanking the shopping angels for this diversion and smiling hand the cashier the movie but thinking “get me out of this insert adjective store”. And now there is one cart. Where there was once three. And we are all pushing it.  And I am thinking about carts. And a store with a play area like Ikea. And carts are optional.

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