My Mission Statement

I write to serve, to unite, to educate. I write to share literature and flesh out ideas that may be of interest to others. I write to document an emotion, experience, or a blip in time. My mission is to write in such a way that the reader is reminded that we can find humor in all situations. It's one of the great blessings of life.


Monday, October 5, 2009

Confession of a Shopping Cart Thief

LOVE this quote, don't you?
“A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice–like the stroke of an artist's brush–is the thumbprint of her whole person–her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms.” -Patricia Lee Gauch ...

Happy Monday morning to all! We enjoyed a wonderful, action-packed, SAFE week-end. Thankfully no more injuries in the Koppelman house. But here's the kind of goofball thing I do on a Sunday afternoon.

Yesterday I ran into the grocery store to grab a few things. Well, for those of you who don't live in a small town, let me remind you that when you run in a store, any store, you know 90% of the people in there. Running in and out of somewhere is nearly impossible, but somehow I still keep thinking I can do it. So I've left my older kids babysitting, but there's no bread in the house. They're hungrily waiting, faces pasted against the window, for me to return with something for lunch. (or perhaps pasted to facebook and toondisney.com since trampoline is not allowed in my absence). AT ANY RATE, I ran into the store. I grabbed one of those cute little carts (I'm always in denial), and filled it up with yummy veggies and some curiously beautiful fall strawberries that may be SSOs (name that book!). I made it to the third aisle before I saw a friend and we began to visit and talk and press ourselves against the dry pasta so other people could get by with their carts. WE exchanged recipes for feeding the youth at church, etc. before I tore myself away to finish my shopping. Another two aisles over, I realize: THIS ISN'T MY CART. But about half the things in it ARe mine, so clearly I've been shopping with someone else's cart for a while. Probably the whole time I was standing there socializing. So I head back through the grocery store, like an idiot, asking, "Are you missing your cart?" because someone has gone to a lot of trouble to fill this cart, and I know they don't want to re-shop.

Of course, people look at me like I'm crazy because they're all PUSHING CARTS, so they're, like, "No, we HAVE carts."

Then I begin to analyze the cart, or more specifically, the items that were there before me: pine nuts-mmmm, a sophisticate, perhaps lots of veggies --a certain body type comes to mind and so on. I narrow down the people in the grocery store by the items in the cart. I feel like a detective or a stalker, studying everyone in the store.

But after the second trip around the store, two things happen:
1. People start to look at me nervously and hold their children a little closer
2. I find MY cart! (which I had kind of forgotten about)

At this point, it's 2:00 and my kids have been waiting for lunch since after church, so I figure I'd better go. I left the other cart where my cart was (maybe they'll come back to the scene of the crime? Oh, that's right--I was the criminal--does the victim come back to the scene of the crime? Probably not) ANYWAY, here's your task.

Ask around, my Edentonian friends, I guarantee we'll find out who lost their cart yesterday because I really do want to apologize. I fear that I talked so long to my friend that the poor victim had to re-shop OR someone spied me with their cart socializing and glared or something, but I didn't notice. So help me out. I know you know someone who went to the grocery store after church yesterday. Maybe you could open the conversation with something like this, "Hey, do you like pine nuts?"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love this story. Read it outloud to my daughter and we were both laughing. You should have just bought the pine nuts.
Oh, and I love the illustration on your Shine Brightly story! You should frame that.

--Jody

Liz said...

This is hilarious! I'm going to be eavesdropping around town to see who is complaining about the debacle in Food Lion!


Isabel by Donna Jones Koppelman

Isabel by Donna Jones Koppelman

Major Bear at the Grove Park Inn by Donna Jones Koppelman

Major Bear at the Grove Park Inn by Donna Jones Koppelman