Out of Kilter
February 2, 2008
By Ken Carpenter
I am hobbling around today cursing the long-departed owners of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain, Sylvan Goodman. He was the demented soul who, in a desire to fill his pockets by simplifying the pack-mule capacity of grocery shoppers, designed the world’s first wheeled shopping cart. He did so in 1937, and Americans have been getting fatter and gimpier ever since then.
Shopping for food was work before that, for you only bought what you could pack, and you came back more often. The introduction of the shopping cart revolutionized shopping and made it easier for people to stockpile lots of goodies. Problem is, they bought bigger piles at one time, but they ate most of it and went back for more instead of trying to make it last like they did when they had to make more trips.
Those habits grew worse, and now in 2007 we are renowned as the fattest country in the world. Those darn shopping cards!
They are dangerous buggers too, especially when in the hands of a woman. I long ago banned my wife from driving the cart when I am with her. This was due to numerous attacks on my Achilles tendon, several of which came within an eyelash of crippling me.
Before going further, I must state that I am not a big critic of women drivers. When it comes to automobiles, men are much more likely to get in a wrest, get arrested or get lost. The male’s murderous tendencies seem to pop out in a motorized vehicle quicker than they do anywhere else. Add to that the masculine train of being the risk taker of the species, and the numbers do not lie; men are an accident waiting to happen.
Shopping cards are different though. They are the female’s killer popper outer, as my battered ankles can testify. Electric carts are different, for their self-powered abilities tune into a man’s savage side and ignore his mate’s.
Sheer numbers make the manual cart a more dangerous tool, and the shopping-mode woman a more dangerous predator. Tread lightly down that noodle aisle.
I discussed this situation with numerous folks, and their opinion is divided right down the party lines. The men refuse to let their wives drive the cart when they are shopping for fear of a lethal assault from the rear. The women say that if the boobs weren’t shuffling along, trying to ogle every behind in the place, they wouldn’t get rammed. None of them denied doing any ramming, but they all felt it justified.
Why, just yesterday, I suffered a fearsome cracking to the tender meat of both high ankles, from a art wheeled by a lone-wolf lady shopper. I almost went to my knees, just managing to avoid the humiliation by leaning on my cart. My attacked mumbled an apology and sped off in the general direction of the Vienna sausages.
If civilization ever comes to an end, I predict that packs of women pushing shopping cards will take over the world. The men will become their bagboys, laid low by the lack of automobiles and the abundance of ankle injuries.
May you burn forever in purgatory, Sylvan Goodman!