Dude, Where’s My Cart?

 I’m having an identity crisis. But it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not unhappy with my career, my husband isn’t leaving me and I’m not changing my hair color. I can even live with my cellulite. It’s just that I can’t find my shopping cart.

Today, I went grocery shopping. I started in the produce section, automatically loading my cart with bananas and lettuce. Then I hit the meat department and mindlessly grabbed a family-size pack of hamburger.

By the time I was at the dairy case, I was on autopilot, stashing gallon jugs of 2-percent milk into the bottom of my overflowing cart. I checked my list, but I hardly had to. I buy the same thing every week.

But today was different. There was a special on juice boxes and I abandoned my cart to investigate. I picked up three (limit four per family) cubes of kiwi cranberry and suddenly it hit me.

I was lost. Like the time in the parking garage when I couldn’t find my car. My cart was missing, or at least I couldn’t recognize which groceries were mine.

I scanned the supermarket horizon. My heart was pounding. Then I saw a lone silver cart gleaming in the fluorescent light. As I got closer I spied Kashi Go Lean, nonfat organic yogurt and broccoli florets.





"By the time I was at the dairy case, I was on autopilot, stashing gallon jugs of 2-percent milk into the bottom of my overflowing cart."
“Ah ha!” I said to myself, “That’s me, that’s my cart.”

But as I went to claim my groceries, a soft voice said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I think that’s my cart.”

She was young. She was slim. She had edgy little eye glasses and a skimpy Green Day T-shirt.

“Darn,” I thought. “Of course, that could never be my cart.”

I looked around again. “Oh, there it is,” I thought dejectedly. I saw telltale loaves of puffy white bread and bags of marshmallows spilling formlessly from a cart shoved into the dark recesses of the bakery department. Resigned, I went to retrieve my monochromatic load.

“Hey, little lady, I think that’s my cart you’ve got there.”

He was big and bearded and wore a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt. As he wheeled off with the Wonder Bread, I thought, “Phew! How could I have thought his groceries were mine?”

I started to panic. Muzak was pounding in my brain. I got goose bumps. Maybe it was from wandering up and down the frozen-food section, or maybe it was that I suddenly felt really lost.

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