The other day, my wife and I needed a few groceries, so we decided to go to the newest Target in town. When we got there, the abundance of back hoes in the parking lot told us that it wasn’t quite open yet, so we reluctantly went across the street to Wal-Mart. At the entrance, we went to get a cart, but a strange lady singing bad music and playing guitar for some charity that she scribbled onto a sign was in front of the carts, so we opted not to get one.
We ended up needing more groceries than we thought, so we started looking for an abandoned cart inside of the store. Since we were in Wal-Mart, we quickly found one and I gave it the five second rule: wait by the cart for five seconds and if no one claims it, it’s yours. There was some weird vegitable or something in it, so I took that out and left it by the chips. On that note, why do I feel like I have to sneaky when putting something back in the wrong spot, like I’m worried that Wal-Mart security is going to beat me with rubber, smiley-face clubs if I put a box of cereal in the chips aisle. Anyways, we were loading up our cart – milk, cereal, laundry soap, eggs – the usual, when I noticed this asian family staring at us. They were following us around and pointing. It was creepy and I was worried that we had stolen their cart. Well…not stolen their cart, I did give it the five second rule, so we were fine.
Finally, the woman in the group approached us and, in broken English, informed us that we had stolen her cart. First thing that I thought was, “no, you abandoned your cart.” The woman asked where her ginger was. Christ, we were in Wal-Mart, I’m sure there are various forms of ginger throughout the store. But she wanted her ginger and it was in the chips section. I walked on way (the way I thought the chips were) and my wife took the woman the other way. I turned around and to see me make a fool of myself, as I now looked like the kind of asshole American that you read about in the Le Canard enchaîné. To make a long story short (okay, it wasn’t that long of a story), my wife showed the woman to her precious ginger and we avoided the family whose abandonded cart we took for the rest of our shopping.
Moral of the story: Know when Target opens and avoid Wal-Mart, crazy singing women, and cart abandoning asians.
