The children are in the kind of mood where they think it’s worthwhile to have the argument that another child can’t claim to be doing “nothing” when that child is in fact breathing, and also their heart is beating, and also their hair is growing, and also they’re blinking, so obviously they must be a TOTAL IDIOT to claim to be doing nothing. I’d been sipping a diet Coke, and I added a slug of vodka to it. Just slugged it RIGHT IN.
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This might be the only time in my life I see this, so I am making note. First, you have to imagine a woman in her late 60s, with sensible glasses and a conservative grey haircut of the sort I would have called a “mom haircut” except that since it’s usually OUR moms we mean, I suppose it’s actually a “grandma haircut.” (But not OUR grandmas. Unless your grandma is in her late 60s. You know, maybe referring to things with labels that apply to more than one generation is too confusing.) Picture her wearing an Alfred Dunner set: elastic-waist wrinkle-free pastel trousers with coordinated short-sleeved seersucker button-down collared shirt with a subtle pastel stripe that includes the same pastel of the trousers.
Got her in your mind? Now imagine her on a tough-looking motorcycle. Not wearing a helmet. Cruising along. Chin held level. Nothing in her face to show she admits this is out of the ordinary.
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Is your Nice Things We Do For Other People list a little SPARSE? Perhaps they asked you not to donate blood again after you fainted six times in a row, and the place you’d like to volunteer isn’t something you can do while the children are still small, and things are a little tight for donating money right now, and so on? I have AN IDEA. And what makes this a Great Idea is that it is (1) something that takes almost zero effort, which is nice if you are feeling like if ONE more person asks you for ONE more thing you are going to rip off your clothes and go shrieking down the railroad tracks, but (2) genuinely helpful in its own modest way, and (3) you might be doing it ALREADY for other reasons, but now you can feel Cheerful Community Member about it.
The idea is: bring in a cart with you from the parking lot. Take it from the corral, or better yet get one that someone left in/near a parking space. You need a cart anyway, and this means your Net Cart Effect is zero or better (you take one in with you; you take it back out and leave it properly in the corral) rather than -1 (you walk in; you take a cart out with you; somebody has to go out in the nasty heat/slush and get that cart and bring it back into the store). (Speaking of which: this idea doesn’t work in circumstances when all the outside carts are scorching hot or covered in snow/ice or dripping with rain. Yick.)
Plus, it’s handy to get the cart early: you can put your purse and/or reusable bags and/or small children in it at the earliest possible moment (these are the reasons you might already have been participating, without realizing you were being a Cheerful Helpy Citizen), and you don’t have to get in the way and/or wait for people to get out of your way at the in-store cart area. Plus, as my mom points out, a cart that has been used for an entire shopping trip is less likely to be a bum cart. [Clarification: by “bum cart,” I mean one that squeaks or has stiff wheels or has a wheel that pulls to one side so you’re constantly fighting it.]
My brother used to have arguments with me like that. Like, up through our mid 20s. (me, feeling sick: “My god I’m so sick I feel like I’m dying” him: “How do you know what dying feels like? There’s no way you could know that”
Vodka is the only solution
Slugged it right in. I’m imagining it like it’s a scene in a movie and it is hilarious.
Too funny! I almost ALWAYS take a cart from the corral – except in extreme heat or rain.
The cart idea is an excellent one, but I think I’ll save it for winter. Here in southern AZ, unshaded carts approach molten temperature. OR, I could bring a hot cart with me, but exchange it for a cool one at the entrance. It would probably have to be a childless shopping trip to bother with that, though.
Great idea! Maybe that would save me from getting irrationally angry at the yahoos that leave their cart sitting in the middle of the parking lot. I sometimes have to imagine some poor soul with a broken leg hobbling out to their car and just not having that last bit of strength to push the cart to the corral so my head doesn’t explode all over the parking lot. Cause really, if I who has to drag 4 energetic boys to the store with me has the strength to put that damn cart away, most other people should too, right?!?
Great cart idea! Even better is to offer to take in someone’s cart that they just finished unloading. Bonus points if it’s a mother of small children.
It’s nice for the person AND the store.
Oh that’s a really good Nice Thing idea.
That lady on the motorcycle? I kind of … want to be her friend.
I’m in Arizona too! I try to offer my cart to someone going into the store so they can have a nice, cool cart. Plus, people like taking carts from me because I use one of those fabric covers for the baby-it seems cleaner to them (an older man who actually waited for my cart told me that. Weird, but okay…)
Also, two Swistle posts in one day? Bonus!
Alfred Dunner on the Harley. THAT is awesome.
I always try to park right next to a cart return with carts in it. It eliminates the need to carry my kids into the store, and makes it SUPER easy when I have to put my cart away after shopping. Best of both worlds.
I had to read that last sentence a few times (what, it’s late) because I first thought you meant a cart that was used by bums. Which made sense, sort of. But now I get that you mean “bum” as in, rattly-wheeled, or turny-toward-the-shelving-rather-than-going-straight.
I love Net Cart Effect. And I love your description of “grandma haircut” and I really wish I’d seen this motorcycle mama in action. I bet she ALSO puts slugs of vodka in her soda – on occasion – which for some reason seems like a pleasing character trait.
That first part sounds like an argument I can see my kids having in a couple of years – seeing as they now argue about things like who owns the plane that flies overhead while we eat lunch…
So glad you made note of the motorcycle lady!
Either I’m being incredibly dense (always a possibility, I admit) or things are – once again – different here in France, but I don’t really get the shopping cart thing. If I were to go to a supermarket here (I don’t – I don’t have a car – as I do my grocery shopping on the internet) with the intention of doing grocery shopping, I’d have no alternative but to take a cart from the parking area and take it with me into the supermarket. If I went in without one, I’d have to use a basket (and that gets heavy very quickly), assuming they have them (which not all supermarkets do now). I do get that offering to take one back for someone would make me a Cheerful Helpy Citizen, except that you have to put a coin in carts here to “unlock” them from their chains (and you only get it back when you rechain your cart), so the person you’re helping would have to be trusting that you weren’t just after their 1€ coin too… Hmmm I think it must just be a different system, actually.
LOVE the idea of the slugged vodka. Totally with you on that.
Have you made a decision about your tattoo?
Magic27- Yes, it’s just a different system here: no chains, no coins. Carts are free as birds, stacked up inside the store and also in corrals outside (so customers don’t have to take them back in to the inside-store area). Employees periodically have to come out to the parking lot and gather up the carts and bring them back inside.
Other people already expressed me thoughts. Recently I’ve been passing by the outside carts because HOT.
I also park in spots close to corrals for child wrangling ease, especially in the heat. Can’t leave the child alone in the car, dragging child halfway across a hot lot to return cart when my nerves are already frayed after shopping is asking for tears from at least one of us.
Last, I also misread the “bum cart” part. (Mornings are not my sharpest time.) I was thinking that if the store had a big problem with bums borrowing carts and returning them all nasty, I’d go to a different store. But, yeah, the wobbly wheel thing makes much more sense….
heehee, the misreads of the “bum carts” are totally making my morning. now i’m having a lovely time envisioning bums politely returning all manner of questionable carts to the parking lot corrals.
What steams me is that at my local grocery store, the people who bag your groceries automatically take the cart out for you unless you ask them not to–it’s a free service posted everywhere (no tipping allowed). SO, the shopper had to basically FIGHT OFF the kindly helper in the grocery store (who takes the carts TO YOUR CAR and LOADS YOUR GROCERIES AND RETURNS THE CART TO THE STORE FOR YOU) so that the she/he could then take the cart him/herself and LEAVE IT IN THE PARKING LOT to dent my car. Pant, pant, pant.
I usually take my own groceries to the car because I like doing it myself but I am a cart stacker. If I see another cart left in the lot, I’ll grab it and take both carts in. Another deposit into the bank of nice because sometimes, I, too, take an asshole withdrawal (but NEVER with grocery carts).
Let me second the sentiment that you get extra points for taking a cart in from a mom with small children who has just finished unpacking it. I try to park next to the cart corral, but it doesn’t always happen, and the grocery store I go to only has 1 for the entire parking lot, so yeah, it is awesome when someone volunteers to do that for me. It’s the little things that make you happy.
Know what’s even better? Taking one if for someone who just put her stuff in her car – not that will be a ‘good feeling’ on top of the ‘nice things we do’.
J.
I always try to practice good cart karma because it often returns with prime parking in the future. Our local grocery stores offer complimentary carry-out but I have rarely used them being able-bodied and all.
The motorcycle granny has made my day, maybe even my whole WEEK.
And one of the things I love about my husband, one of those small inconsequential things I’d never have thought to look for in a mate but appreciate wholly anyway is the fact that he ALWAYS puts our cart away when he’s done with it. Always. And sometimes he takes a few minutes to collect two or three other wayward carts from the parking lot and corral those as well, just because someone else should’ve done it. There’s something wholly decent about just taking the time to put the dang car away, you know?