Meeting My Match at OSJL in Orange...Almost a Cartostrophe!

I have written about it before and I often share it in professional development and workshops: I have a shopping cart pet peeve and cannot stand when people empty goods from a cart and simply leave the carriage in the lot between cars or somewhere away from their own so they can drive off.

For several years now, I have made it a resolution to always return my cart and, on many occasions, I return carts left by lazy imbeciles who don't take the time to do it themselves. It's my self-righteousness checking itself.

That is why this 'cartostrophe' caught my attention yesterday. Kaitlyn, Pam and I made it to OSJL in Orange when I saw a cart overturned in a parking lot and I said to them, "You know this is too much for me. I need to rescue her."

I began to labor and a man, parked in front of the cart started laughing. It was a good laugh. He heard me talking in 3rd person about how she needed emancipation, and "Oh, Dear...How could someone do this to you?" He was laughing hard.

Then, when Pam and I wedged the cart out of the bank, Kaitlyn stepped in to help and literally fell down in the pit. It turns out the cart was wedged there to cover a gigantic hole so people wouldn't drive over it. Seriously. It was a crater, and we laughed with the guy who was driving away saying, "Wouldn't it be funnier if, after you freed the cart I ran into that giant pot hole and ruined my car?"

I put the cart back over the abyss.

Later, in the store, we learned from the clerk that a plow knocked over a lamp post during the storm, creating the canyon in the parking lot. They put the cart there to keep cars safe.

"Oh, you're the man in the black hat," she says. "We wondered if you were going to put it back. We were watching on security."

I guess I am sort of famous. It wasn't quite 15 minutes, but in my head I performed a semi-famous act. But it was a bad act, because people could have been hurt. My cart-fetish heart was twitching the rest of the day.

I tried. I failed. And my failure was a good thing.