Shopping Carts

Over my life I've had a lot of experiences with different shopping carts.

I know that we all seem to get that ONE rotten, beat-up cart at the grocery store. It never fails. It either pulls incredibly hard to the left, or one of the wheels is too short, and so it spins around in little circles the whole time that you're shopping. You could have gone back and swapped baskets, but you didn't. I didn't either. Nor do I ever. I have this thing about going back after I've already started.

I used to be a sacker/bagger/carryout at an HEB grocery store in Corpus Christi, TX. I had many an experience with carts then, too. I ran over an old lady's heels as I was helping her get her stuff to her car. I cleaned baby poop off of a few of those little "kid seats." I know I hit a couple of cars with them on accident. No one ever saw that. So if your car left the HEB that used to be on Saratoga and Everhart in between July and October of 1997 with less paint than it came there with, it could have been that moron who opens his car door too far, or it could have been me with my cart. I got into trouble numerous times for riding on the carts. How could you not ride the carts back when there was a bit of a slope to glide down?

I had my longest experience with a shopping cart today. My mother, God love her, bought my birthday present today. She bought me a $100 gift certificate to the largest online hobby shop in the world. If you know me, and most likely you don't, that's going to make me one happy guy. I spent most of my day from 1pm until about 5 minutes ago (2:40am) sitting here adding things into the cart, and then taking them out. One model plane in, one sanding stick out. One pin vise in, one paint jar out. All day long. It was amazing. I got to go shopping with my birthday money, which is something that I haven't done in years, because it usually ends up going towards bills of some sort. I didn't have to annoy my wife by standing there and handling every single model airplane on the shelf, nor did I make the workers start wondering if there was something wrong inside my head, or think I was going try to stuff something down my pants and walk out. It was amazing.

Great birthday present, mom.

Happy birthday to me. Well, on the 9th, anyway.