The Shopping Cart

I often take a shopping cart from the parking lot into the store for two reasons, one is that I am saving a store employee a little work, and the other is that with the cart in front of me that cars are more likely to let me traverse the crosswalk. With this in mind I took a shopping cart from the cart corral in Wal-Mart’s parking lot into the store and started shopping for a few items.

At first the cart was fine, but then the right front wheel began to turn and squeak and rumbled and it was as if I was driving over logs – and the noise! I turned the cart this way and that, thinking that the right combination of twists and turns would remedy the problem – to no avail.

Unfortunately the few items I needed were at opposite ends of the store. Well, I would do my best to make it from the hardware section to the grocery section. It got worse. I used a store phone to call customer service to request that someone bring me another cart, no one answered. Then, since we have road service through our insurance company, I called the 800 number only to have the person on the other end hang up as I was explaining my dilemma.

Thump, thump, thump went the cart. I was halfway through the store, from the hardware section to the grocery section. Thump, thump, thump went the cart. (You would think they’d supply spare wheels for such occasions). I still had to go to the back end of the grocery section and then to the front of the store. I was surprised the thump thump thump wasn’t registering on the Richter scale. There were Gremlins in the wheel. I needed a NASCAR pit crew to change this tire but there were none to be found. There were employees hiding behind displays looking and laughing. Security was having a hoot observing me on cameras – no doubt betting on whether I would make it to the front of the store with the cart. I was amazed that the thump thump thump didn’t crack the floor tile. I was surprised that the vibrations from the thump thump thump hadn’t caused pyramids of merchandise to cascade to the floor burying customers and employees under an avalanche of Walmart falling prices.

A filling was jarred out of a tooth.

I stopped the cart. Gathered what I had in my arms. Quickly walked to the grocery section and picked up one more item, found the cashier with the shortest line, and mercifully ended my travail without dropping anything.

I got in the car and called the dentist. “I just had a filling fall out while I was shopping. It was the strangest thing,” I told the receptionist.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Mind if I ask what store?”

“Walmart.”

“I bet it was the shopping cart wheel, we get a lot of those.”