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Ballad of a Stray Shopping Cart It was on a cold winter's day when the shopping cart appeared on the lawn in front of my house. It appeared as if by magic, but of course no magic was involved. It was simply abandoned there by an asshole. I know it was an asshole because who but an asshole would abandon a shopping cart in front of someone's house? I noticed the shopping cart that evening as I rounded the corner on my drive home from the train station. I didn't think much about it, though, because how much time do you usually devote to thinking about shopping carts when you're not, you know, out shopping? The next morning, when I went to get the paper off the front stoop, I noticed that the shopping cart was still there. It had not moved during the night. Not one inch. It was still there that evening as I returned home, and the following morning as I got the newspaper again. By then I suppose I was harboring a naive notion that the asshole who had abandoned it on the lawn in front of my house might come back and get it for some inexplicable reason. Or that some shopping cart bounty hunter might spot it and haul it away in the back of his pickup truck along with other shopping carts abandoned by other assholes. Or that some juvenile delinquent ditching school might take it for a joy ride or something. After a few days it became apparent that the shopping cart wasn't going anywhere. It began to gnaw at me, to taunt me. Suddenly, it was no longer just an abandoned shopping cart on the lawn in front of my house, it was a metaphor for all that has gone wrong with this country -- the breakdown of civic responsibility, the promotion of personal convenience over the greater good, assholism over humanism. I thought about sneaking out late at night and abandoning it on the lawn in front of someone else's house. But then I would be no better than the asshole who abandoned it in front of my house. I thought about moving it into the alley because scavengers in beat-up trucks frequently drive through there and pick up all manner of discarded things. But that was no better than leaving it in front of somebody's house. Early one Saturday morning about a week later I decided I couldn't take it anymore, so I put on some grubby sweats. I was going to push that fucking shopping cart back to the supermarket where it belonged. In the pantheon of all human activity I reckon returning shopping carts is very low on the priority list. I mean, just look around the parking lot of a shopping center, how people just leave their shopping carts all over the damn place. On busy days its like driving through an obstacle course. Of course, I'm not saying that returning shopping carts would solve anything. But it seems to me that if we can't even do the small shit, how are we going to solve the big shit? Anyway, I set off with the shopping cart for the supermarket about a mile away. I hopped on the back of it and rode it down a little hill to a normally busy boulevard which was practically deserted because it was so early on a Saturday morning. With the hood of my sweatshirt pulled over my head, I might've been the Unabomber pushing a shopping cart along the street. The only sound was its rattle. Along the way, I came across a couple more abandoned shopping carts, so I pushed them all together and took them back too. I have to admit that when I finally dumped those shopping carts off at the supermarket, I didn't feel like I had accomplished anything. A shopping cart was returned, big deal. I doubt my standing as a human, or even a citizen, rose one iota. I suppose there was a possibility that someone in the neighborhood noticed that the shopping cart was gone -- that it had disappeared as if by magic. All I can say with unequivocal certainty is that the damn shopping cart was no longer on the lawn in front of my house.
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