Scribbling #41: The Supermarket Cart

Not only do they call it by a different name - a "cart" instead of a "trolley" - but there are many things that are very strange and slightly unnerving about entering such places with names like 'Wal-Mart' and 'Canadian Superstore'.

There is the attitude of a lot of drivers around the *cough* parking lot *cough* whereby they are permanently and irrevocably scared of pedestrians crossing the road towards where they need to be.  This can either be the store or the car/van/whimsy of a truck, whichever is in the interest of the person in the direction that they're going.  It's like they see a person, stare for a second as the neuron fires, then the brakes slam down, causing the car to go into a skidding halt across Canadian Snow and Ice   It was as if they saw an amazing, incomparable thing and had to stop and make sure that it actually exists.  On the other hand, I am a pretty darn handsome specimen, something Canada may not have seen before.

I'm taking your silence as awe with a slice of reverence on the side.

Or, it could be that the Canadian Snow and Ice was covering the unseeable crossing, and the only thing that was really stopping them was the law.  Other than that, I'm sure I would be a smear across the parking lot that may not be good for me in the long run, but would be good for the landscaping.

Which brings me not-at-all neatly to the supermarket cart.  This is not, but any stretch, something like a Tesco trolley.  Oh, nosiree Bob, eh?  The generic Tesco trolley is a wonderful thing within an establishment such as ah... Tesco and not so much within a canal.  This lovely thing is more agile than a mosquito in a tornado, something that you can turn around at any given angle, spin around and make a 180-degree turn without any trouble at all.  And I would always, by default, get the one with the wobbly wheel.  It's like wanting to sponsor the amazingly ugly kid on World Vision or something.  Nobody else is going to do it, so you have to show them how it's done.

That was possibly the worst analogy in the world.  There is no such thing as a cute trolley.

Anyway, the thing is, is that, well... only the two front wheels spin around in most of the shopping carts in Canada.  I may be corrected and told that the full AWD spinning carts do exist, but I haven't come across them yet.  I thought that this was a horrible, horrible thing.  It was made even more repulsive by the fact that the trolley sits high enough for the elderly to rest their upper torso on while carrying out their shopping routine around the badly disorganised supermarket.  Yes, you, you in the back, your hands are on the same place on that shopping cart where once an elderly lady has rested her chest against it.  Ugh.

It doesn't become clear until you go outside.  Until then, you're grumbling about how the cart handles, that it doesn't know how to go around a corner properly, that it's too big and it's being driven by an idiot.  Pretty much sums up most North American driving, then.  Before you take the cart outside, you won't understand.  The huge truck thing you won't understand either, until you get your hands on a shopping cart.  These things with your groceries in, with their fixed rear wheels, will give you greater traction in the snow.  Edmonton has snow six months out of the year.  This is where it's at.  Trucks are huge, ungainly, won't go around corners and are driven by idiots, but they go through the white fluffy stuff pretty well indeed.  Same as the humble supermarket cart.  If its wheels weren't fixed, then they would be going all over the place, making the person who has just shopped a very angry person indeed.  You don't need an angry person behind the wheel of a two-ton truck with 400 horsepower.  That would end badly.  Make the carts have fixed wheels, said a smart person.  All will be well.

Goshdarnit, I'm a handsome beast.