Kids and Carts

Min wrote a great post today about her boy and carts in various stores.

It put me in mind of the most memorable occasion that I have regarding children and carts. I wanted to write it down, so that it will never be forgotten. (Fat chance of that, really)

When Kira was an infant, we went to WalMart and I strapped her into one of those baby seats. (I know, ewwwwwww. S'ok, she was wrapped in blankets and nothing actually touched her.) Mark was a "big boy" (about five) and he was free to wander. Which meant he was required to stay within touching distance of mom or the cart. Because he had recently discovered the fun of clothes-rack hide-and-seek and scared the living bejeezus out of his mother at Sears, but that is another story.

So anyway, I actually had the audacity to LOOK AT SOMETHING ADULT (probably shoes), and in the approximately five seconds I was doing this, still with one hand on the cart because I didn't want someone rolling away with my baby, there was this big giant CRASH and the cart was suddenly no longer under my hand.

Whipped my head around and saw that Mark had decided to scale the side of the cart (apparently to climb in the big part), and pulled the cart over sideways on top of himself. The cart in which his baby sister was strapped. So the shopping cart is on its side, smushing my son, while my baby is sideways, and I'm trying to pull the cart off Mark and get it upright and get to Mark to see if he's hurt and get to Kira to see if *she's* hurt, and the cart is NOT cooperating, it's wanting to skid sideways instead of getting its damn self upright.

The kids were absolutely fine, Mark was just a little shaken up. Kira was oblivious. Never even made a peep. *I* was in desperate need of drugs. Big horse tranquilizers. And alcohol.

And do you think this went entirely unobserved? Of course not. I had to hold it all together for the gape-jawed audience (none of whom actually tried to HELP, come to think of it). And I "casually" strolled away. mk