On Mini-Carts and Other Annoyances

I often grocery shop around 4pm. Why I time my shopping, as a stay-at-home-mom with a flexible schedule, to coincide with the first wave of on-the-way-home-from-work shoppers and my children’s’ crabbiest, most difficult time of day (due to hunger and fatigue) is a mystery, but I unfailingly do. We generally shop at a good-sized, but still smaller than a conventional grocery store, co-op. This means narrow aisles and an abundance of toddler-level bulk food bins. The crowning glory among co-op food acquisition nuisances is the child-sized carts, though. I’m sure there are children out there who helpfully and sedately push the cart along, putting only approved-of objects in the cart. These are not my two or four-year-old.

Imagine, if you will, a co-op crowded with late afternoon shoppers. My wired, grumpy offspring are each in possession of a child-sized cart – cleverly designed with a bar at just the right height to painfully clip an adult’s heels if not handled properly. My two-year-old daughter selects tasty goods and drops them into her basket from height – usually easily-bruised fruit that I do not wish to purchase. My four-year-old son careens rapidly and enthusiastically ahead of us, intending to maintain firm control over his cart and succeeding an admirable, but unfortunately still dangerous and annoying to other shoppers, 90% of the time. The, counter-intuitively, less difficult scenario is when there is only one little cart available. The pain of the conflict over sharing it is more than compensated for by the relief of only having to ride herd over one ankle-eating projectile.

I am convinced that the co-op believes they are providing a service to parents in these mini-carts. What possible motivation would they have for providing them if not? And I do have to admit that I have occasionally used the “store with the little carts” line in bolstering my case for getting shopping resistant kids out of the house. I am certain, despite this, that my life would be simpler without the carts. I feel the same way about the gigantic, heavy, unmaneuverable car carts at the mainstream grocery stores. Thank heaven they are nearly never available. Not only are they hard to push and steer, but, once the initial moment of excitement is over, they are not interesting for the kids to ride in. Then I have bored kids that I can’t see or interact with, because the view into the cab of the car is minimal. What do bored, unsupervised children do in a grocery store? They take things off shelves, rip them open and begin to eat them, that’s what. At least that’s what my kids have been known to do. If your children are above this sort of thing, I don’t want to hear about it. Either they destroy and or eat the merchandise or they perform death-defying acrobatic stunts in the cab of the car. I’m not much bothered by these, but they do give my fellow shoppers and, especially, store employees collective apoplexy.

One other well-intentioned but disastrously unhelpful service to parents comes to mind – the medical clinic toy area. Now, I’m no germophobe. You’re talking to a woman who cheerfully allows her infants to crawl on airport floors (it’s really not so bad if you avoid thinking too hard about it). But really, a sick child toy swap? Where, when and why, even for a moment to someone who never considered having children, did this seem like a good idea? Yet you see it all the time. Gee, poor Jack has such a horrible cough that I’m bringing him in to be swabbed for pertussis. Little Olivia has what will shortly be diagnosed as Fifths disease. Wouldn’t it be a lovely idea if we provided a means for them to swap germs, even if they’re not actually in the clinic that the same time? There is a laundry list of reasons I avoid unnecessary clinic visits, and this is certainly among them.

It’s difficult to explain some of this stuff. After all, one can’t argue that parents don’t rule the world. Most adults do, at some point, reproduce, and the ruling elite wear their children like merit badges. It does seem that perhaps people rarely put on a true parenting hat when making decisions in a professional setting. Or, perhaps more likely, this lens of perception brought on by spending all day every day with the under six set just fades with the era. Maybe the day will come when I cheerfully offer one-year-olds hard candy and wonder why those terrible parents at the next table don’t make their toddler sit quietly and eat her dinner. I hope not, though. I’d like to think that the things I’m learning now have a little value and will stick with me. We’ll see.