Adventures in Grocery Shopping: Letters From the Front of the Shopping Cart.

"and whatever snacks you could accidentally knock in while your chauffeur was momentarily distracted."

Photo by Eduardo Soares on Unsplash

Sure, we’d eventually have field trips to amusement parks, but until then?

We had the O.G. carnival ride.

The Shopping Cart.

See, this ride scaled.

You started by the handles, legs pushed through the little metal gaps.

Then you graduated into the cart itself, hopefully immersed in that week’s groceries… and whatever snacks you could accidentally knock in while your chauffeur was momentarily distracted.

And then, the final evolution:
Standing on the front.
Gripping the sides like you were on a stunt team.
Pushed around the supermarket in the BEST stop n go traffic you’d ever know.

This was prime childhood right here.

But time waits for no one, they say. And eventually, the time came when I was too big for the cart.

Sitting here now, and looking back, I can safely say it was one of the two milestones that told me I was “Growing up.”

The first was when I was too big to stand on the front of the cart.

The second when I found myself voluntarily buying a bottle of Robitussin because my cough was that bad.

Dimetap was NOT gunna cut it that time, grape or no grape.

Sometimes, when I’m at the supermarket going broke at checkout, I’ll see a kid riding around on the cart as their mom or dad pushes them around.

And I smile.

Because I know how good they have it.

I just wonder if they know it yet.

-KC