WHY TAKING MY CARRIAGE IN THE GROCERY STORE MIGHT BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

I am about to start crying in the grocery store.  Someone has taken my half-filled carriage and walked away with it.  No, my child is not in the cart, my cell phone is securely in my pants pocket, and my wallet is still in my possession.  Still, I swear I'm going to cry.

I am so goddamned tired I can't even begin to describe it.  I have been working nonstop on a paper and presentation for days.  If I never see a research paper again, it will be ten days too soon.  My presentation nearly crashes and burns, I have worked through lunch every day for a week, I have no food for dinner and put two nearly empty boxes of pasta together the other night to have something to eat, the milk is out of date, the bread has started to turn green, and I haven't slept more than four hours a night for many, many days. 

I desperately need to go to the grocery store.  I debate going to the over-priced one close to home, but I need ant baits to kill the little varmint who've decided to come and visit me this winter (little fuckers).  These are not carpenter ants; they're more like the regular outside ants who've decided they want to move inside for the season.  I suspect they're coming from next door since ... surprise ... I don't have any food in my house, so I know they're not here for the victuals.

I arrive at the big supermarket and proceed to fill my cart with important things like milk, butter, cheese, chocolate chip cookie dough already made that just needs to be cut and baked, a cooked chicken, and deli meat. I go back for the sliced white cheese, and when I return thirty seconds later, my carriage is gone.

Gone.

I have a sudden panic attack, the kind parents have when their children wander off.  I understand that this is an abnormal reaction, and I keep looking where the cart has been but is no more, and I begin making a larger and larger circle.  This all takes about four minutes.  In the meantime, my brain is on fire.  Yes, I have my list, and yes, I can recreate what I bought and start again, but I'm tired.  I'm oh-so-ever-loving tired right now that the thought of starting over and re-shopping for another twenty minutes seems overwhelming.  I am dangerously close to sitting down in the middle of the aisle and sobbing.

Fuck it.  I'm going to find my cart.  So I start eying the usual suspects.  Who looks disorganized enough to accidentally walk off with the wrong cart?  And how the hell do you not notice a damn cooked chicken in the child seat and think, "Shit, when did I pick up a freshly cooked bird?"

Suddenly I spy my cart.  I know it's my cart because I see the above mentioned items plus the tuna and the crackers and the block of New York sharp cheddar cheese.  I see the guy pushing it and the woman he is with.  They are disheveled, dirty, and wearing pajamas.  Yup, at 3:30 in the afternoon, they are greasy pj-wearers with bathrobes under filthy coats.

Now, I could just say something nice like, "Excuse me, but I believe you have my cart!  Hahahahaha."  Or I could be super polite and be like, "Terribly sorry to trouble you, but I think there's been a mistake."

But I am so tired, and I don't feel well, and I'm on the verge of tears.  I simply go over to the cart and start hurling the few things they've added into the nearest meat case without uttering a single sound.

Pajama man's toothless mouth opens wide, and he yells, "HEY!" 

I don't even make eye contact.  I feel like the parent grabbing her child's hand from that of the bad stranger at an amusement park. 

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" the man continues.

I feel the Language of the Forked Tongue coming on.  I hold my bad language, which is a major accomplishment and I expect lots and lots of kudos for this, and hiss, "My caaaaaaaaaaaaaaart" through clenched teeth.

I leave the couple standing there, shocked and without food.  I am reasonably sure their carriage is the one that wasn't even remotely near mine but now stands alone somewhere near the Sal's pizza display.  When they see me again in the bread aisle, I watch them out of the corner of my eye as they quickly turn around and disappear in the produce, fearing for their lives as they cower behind the spinach and green beans.

Truly I feel like an asshole.  After all, I have been laughing and joking with almost everyone else in the store, including the kid who tries to direct me to the ant killer, but for some reason, losing my cart and the groceries I have desperately needed for days sends me right over the precipice.  Did I mention I'm tired?  I haven't been this tired in a long time. 

So if you're reading this blog post, and if you were shopping in your pajamas at Market Basket on the North Andover/Lawrence line around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 11, 2013, and you hadn't showered in about eight days, and you were throwing really strange things into someone else's cart, then I'd like to apologize.  I'm wicked sorry. Well, I'm not sorry for rescuing my carriage, but I am sorry that you lack the sense to realize you didn't pick up a cooked chicken but yet it sits in your carriage right there under your nose.  (I know you didn't get one because I checked every other damn cart in the area.)

I blame the ants.  Again.  If I didn't need ant traps, I would've shopped at the smaller market, and I never would've seen you at all.  So, sorry that the ants made me shop with you, and that you felt the need to inhale the chicken fumes that didn't rightly belong to your nostrils.

Screw it.  Let's be serious here.  You're goddamned lucky all I do is fling your shit into the meat case.  I mean, this is me we're talking about here, right?  I rest my case.