My son was involved in an accident last week. Yes, he was driving. No, he doesn’t have a license. Yes, he was on a cell phone at the time. No, he’s not in trouble. The other driver was on a cell phone, too. The only damage was a couple of broken eggs. They were both driving shopping carts at the time.
When people get behind the handle of a shopping cart, they forget anything they know about the rules of the road. The aisles of your local MegaFood store resemble rush hour on the LA freeway system during a major earthquake. Some shoppers, frenzied by the promise of fifty cents off on I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Hairspray, careen through the store weaving from side to side, plowing over anything and anyone who gets in their way. Their wide-eyed children hold on for dear life, obviously praying that the cart won’t tip during an especially tight turn. The best thing to do when you encounter of these folks is to put some distance between you and them – preferably by going to an entirely different store. Of course, when you get to that store you’ll find out that it’s having the exact same sale and you’ll be in danger all over again.
Almost as bad as the demolition-derby driver is the wanderer. These folks move at the pace of a stringent ethics bill crawling through congress. If it weren’t for 24-hour supermarkets they would never get their shopping done.
The wanderers come in two basic varieties; the elderly who have earned the privilege of taking their time and men who are clueless about the location of anything in the store and drift along reading every word on each label on all of the items on the shelves. You’ll see these guys holding a list and muttering to themselves, “Spaghetti” while they’re standing amongst the pet supplies.
The best thing to do when you see one of these poor souls is to quietly move along and forget about whatever you needed from the aisle they occupy.
If only the Federal Government would take an interest in this problem and require that people be licensed before they’re allowed to handle a shopping cart. Then my son could have filed a legal complaint against the cart driver who hit him and we might have recovered the cost of our eggs.
Of course requiring licenses would mean we’d have to hire cops to work inside stores to monitor the traffic. And we’d probably need lane lines on the floor, signal lights at the intersections, and insurance and cart inspection and who knows what else. And, naturally, if we started with shopping carts we’d have to consider all of the other dangerous wheeled vehicles out there in the world.
When it comes to dangerous drivers, nothing beats the stroller moms. You’ll see them traveling in packs at the mall. The modern stroller bears as much resemblance to a baby carriage of fifty years ago as a modern computer system does to an abacus. Carriages were relatively simple affairs with a handle, a basket, and a couple of wheels. Strollers are high-tech wonders made with shiny plastic and gleaming metal and complicated interlocking mechanisms. Folding and unfolding one is more complex than the average space shuttle launch.
Once it’s unfolded and the child is strapped in like a test pilot in an ejection seat, the stroller mom takes off for a brisk walk around the mall. In this case, brisk means the same speed as a thoroughbred horse on the home stretch at Churchill Downs. To get in front of one of these manic mommies is to risk having both ham-strings snapped by the front of the Infant Corp Speedster 2000 Eddie Bauer Edition Zoom Carriage(tm).
Somewhere deep inside I think most of these women are closet NASCAR wannabes. Given half a chance they’d trade their stroller for a car seat strapped into a couple of tons of Detroit steel festooned with advertising stickers. Maybe the NASCAR folks should look into this. There’s plenty of room on the strollers for ads. Imagine the daily derby at the local mall, but with ads for Diaper Rash Cream, Pablum, and Mother’s Little Helper brand Stress Medication.
Let me be clear that not all stroller-driving mommas are bad. Just those who are intent on mowing down anyone who gets in the way of their power walking. Oh, and those who let their children drive the strollers.
Sure the kids have shorter legs and aren’t as fast, but they’re more erratic. You can’t count on them catching you from behind. Safety demands that you watch all sides all of the time to avoid being victimized by toddlers who have clearly been raised on a steady diet of gladiator movies featuring vicious chariot races.
As these kids get older, they are given faster and more dangerous vehicles like scooters, skates and bicycles. No longer corralled within the mall they are now free to terrorize entire neighborhoods, whizzing down sidewalks at breakneck speed, swerving around hapless pedestrians (some of whom are elderly folks who are on their way to the grocery store), and generally creating chaos.
It’s not until they turn sixteen and try to get a license that they attract the attention of the authorities. Which brings us back to my son. He’ll be sixteen in six months so it’s time for me to enroll him in driver’s ed. Soon he’ll be learning the rules of the road and then taking a car (or as I think of it, two tons of mechanized death) out on the actual road. I’ve seen him drive a grocery cart and I’m worried. I’ve followed him on the go-cart track and I’m worried. I’ve watched him play driving-related video games and I’m worried. Frankly, I don’t think he’s vicious enough for the freeways yet.
