Have you ever seen this when you’re out shopping? An abandoned
shopping cart. It’s full of merchandise. Someone has taken great
pains to choose their Odor Eaters insoles, roll-on antiperspirant,
Spider Man action figure, 60 Watt light bulbs, red spray paint,
tree-shaped car air freshener, colored Kleenex facial tissues, and
Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits CD; then they abandon the cart in the
middle of everything as they wander down to the other end of the
clearance aisle to browse the half-price plastic storage containers
and the seasonal novelty socks.
This practice drives me nuts.
For one thing, the aisles are never wide enough to begin with,
let alone when you have to steer around somebody’s abandoned cart.
But even more troubling to me is the paranoia that, should i leave
my cart unattended, some diligent K-Targ-mart employee is going to
come across it and restock my plastic ice cube trays, H-size
crochet hook, store brand window cleaner, case of Diet Coke,
package of “AA” batteries, 8 Mile DVD, nasal spray, and
self-adhesive iridescent rainbow star stickers. After having
invested at least 28 minutes to select this fine merchandise, i
would be troubled to have all this hard work go for naught. So i am
very protective of my shopping cart and scorn those folks careless
enough to leave theirs unattended.
On the other hand, i have sometimes taken an opportunistic look
at the situation and wondered if it would be worthwhile to abscond
with someone else’s cart. If that person were choosing the same
items that i needed, it might be well worth my while to save some
of my precious on-shore time by taking their pre-shopped, abandoned
cart.
One day this summer i found a cart that contained these:
Coincidentally, my cryptic shopping list looked like this:
(click the list for larger version)
I wanted to, you know. I could have been in and out of Heinen’s
Acme Eagle so much more quickly if i had just grabbed that cart and
nonchalantly wandered off with it. But i couldn’t do it. Didn’t
have the heart to. Not shifty enough. However, i am cold-hearted
enough to make a puzzle cache based on the experience, and hide a
camoed matchstick holder in the woods, with bushwhacking involved.
The park in which the cache is located has ice in the winter, mud
in the spring, and mosquitoes in mosquito season. It can be busy in
baseball season, but the muggles will be far away from where you
will be hunting.
Be very careful in the winter when there is snow cover. Quite
near the hiding spot, there is an unexpected water-filled hole, not
big enough to be called a pond, but certainly big enough to make
you wet and miserable. It's not as wet as the bogus coordinates,
though. Happy caching, and keep an eye on your cart!