Survival of The Fittest Shopper
\n\u00a9Lisa Barker<\/p>\n
It happens all the time.\u00a0 People speed and chat on the phone while they eat lunch\u2014all behind the wheel.\u00a0 They have no problem multi-tasking in the car.\u00a0 But put them behind a shopping cart at Walmart and these same people can\u2019t walk and browse at the same time.<\/p>\n
You can see the drool dangling off their chins and the vacant look in their eyes and you\u2019re stuck behind them as they feebly try to figure out how to put one foot in front of the other.<\/p>\n
Oh, I love shopping in a packed store.\u00a0 My rear end must look like a shopping cart receptacle because people repeatedly try to park theirs in it.\u00a0 It must be an unwritten rule that states that fellow shoppers who stop to look at merchandise are targets.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not like I stopped suddenly or that I\u2019m being rammed forcibly from behind.\u00a0 I\u2019m reading birthday cards and the next thing I know I\u2019m being sodomized.\u00a0 The corner of a shopping cart is pressed against me even though I\u2019m standing to the side while there is this whole aisle this other shopper could use to get around me.<\/p>\n
But, no, she\u2019s looking at the same merchandise as if she can see right through me and continues to push her way to it.\u00a0 At this point I can either start climbing the card racks or ask her kindly if she would like to remove her cart from my derriere.\u00a0 I get that vacant look again.<\/p>\n
What, am I shopping with the undead?<\/p>\n
People who defy Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution surround me.\u00a0 They are neither stronger nor brighter than a cumquat and probably couldn\u2019t cause any harm on their own, but once they group together, look out.<\/p>\n
I am the fourth person in line at one of the crowded registers.\u00a0 I\u2019ve waited patiently for twenty minutes.\u00a0 Suddenly there is a woman with five kids standing beside me edging closer to the front of my cart.\u00a0 She refuses to look at me as if by not seeing me she\u2019s doing no wrong.<\/p>\n
Next, her kids start grabbing at candy and gum and she tries to use that to further claim a place ahead of me in line, little by little pressing ahead until I finally block her by shoving my cart directly into the man ahead of me.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what planet she\u2019s from, but here on earth line jumping is a universal no-no.\u00a0 She slowly wanders back to the end of the line and I clamp down on my tongue before mocking her feigned mental disability.<\/p>\n
Hey, I\u2019ve got a screaming kid on my left and right and neither belongs to me.\u00a0 I want out of there.<\/p>\n
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\nJelly Mom\u2122 is written by Lisa Barker, author of “Just Because Your Kids Drive You Insane…Doesn’t Mean You Are A Bad Parent!” and syndicated through Martin-Ola Press\/Parent To Parent. To publish Jelly Mom, buy the book or leave comments, please visit http:\/\/www.jellymom.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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