I recently spent some time in one of those corporate apartment complexes. You know the type: a squat, soulless block of rooms, all pre-furnished with identical tables, sofas beds and dishes. And even though it made for a nice enough place to keep my stuff for a while, I wouldn’t really say that this place was… interesting. In fact, the most engaging thing about this complex was the sheer number of abandoned shopping carts left around the grounds.
Every. Day.
Shopping. Carts. Everywhere.
Sometimes you’d turn your back for a second and find one there, staring at you, almost as if it followed you home from the store, wheels squeaking, as if some wanna-be film student was secretly scripting out the world’s worst low-budget horror movie.
And then sometimes I’d pass one cart, then come back by a few minutes later to find another one keeping it company. Honestly, sometimes it seemed like they were multiplying.
I mean, okay, I get it, if you’re staying somewhere for a short time then you’re not likely to buy a car just to take care of your grocery shopping. But, are you so hard up for cash that you can’t lay down twenty bucks on one of those hand carts to haul your groceries back from the store? Think about it— because of your laziness, some high-school kid wearing a florescent vest is going to have to come walking around your neighborhood early on a Saturday morning to round all of these carts up. Is that what you really want?
I kicked around the idea of staking out the parking lot for a few nights, maybe see if I could ID the perp(s) responsible for these brazen heists, but in the end I gave it up, content to toss this mystery back into the cold case files. But one thing’s for certain: if you ever find yourself passing through Northern Virginia, be sure to keep a close eye on your shopping cart.
