Yesterday I went grocery shopping by myself, as Ms B was busy decorating ginger bread houses and christmas cakes with her mother. Shopping on my lonesome normally results in me doing a 'speed shop'. I hurtle down each aisle, flailing wildy at shelves as I speed past at high velocity. Sometimes I end up with the things I need, other times not. It all depends on what gets knocked into the trolley.

Either way, I'm done in fifteen minutes, which is all I really care about.

Yesterday I couldn't help but notice one couple, scrawny and heavily inked, who were pushing around three little girls in a trolley and screaming at them Don't touch that!! at regular intervals. As chance would have it, I picked the checkout with the slowest checkout person in the universe. This not only ruined my attempt at speed shopping, but also allowed the scrawny family to get through ahead of me at another checkout.

As I finally left my checkout, I noticed mother scrawny in the middle of the shopping centre walkway with the three little girls in the shopping trolley. To my horror she decided to play a game with the girls and gripped the trolley handle, spinning it around her in a circular motion as fast as possible.

On the first revolution, I wondered how she avoided cleaning up all of the innocent bystanders who were walking past. Shoppers were leaping out of the way left, right and centre as the trolley screeched around in a wide arc.

On the second revolution I could only only stop and stare and think that something bad was about to happen.

On the third revolution, something bad happened. The smallest girl in the end of the trolley lost her battle with centrifugal force and was catapulted out of the trolley, sailed through the air for a metre and a half, and then hit the unyielding concrete head first.

Thankfully she seemed to be ok.

But I could only wonder about the perils of mixing kids and stupid people.

Posted by Bonestorm on Monday, December 04, 2006 at 10:21 AM | Permalink