Cart Charges

Okay, so most drivers are pretty good. While I don’t know what the percentages are, many people haven’t had any accidents. Still, it makes one wonder. People are sooooo careful with their cars. They won’t play bumper pool with other people’s bumpers to fit into a tiny parking space with one inch on each end clearance (instead, they take a DIFFERENT spot). They don’t run red lights (which of course is ALSO illegal, plus unsafe). They won’t let ANYONE touch their car—including a car wash—preferring to hand wax and buff it themselves.

I am NOT one of these people. I don’t care if I have a few scrapes (200 or so is fine) or a few scratches (100 is within reason) but I ONLY allow these when it’s something I’ve done (or decided NOT to have repaired—who can afford body work nowadays—the Rockefellers?). Still, I like my car to look as nice as possible. I take it in for car washes. I take it to the car mechanic for a regular checkup. Mechanics should be called doctors—they cost as much to tell you everything’s fine—but that’s ANOTHER story.

So, I guess I get a little annoyed at how cavalier people are with shopping carts. What do shopping carts and cars have to do with each other? EVERYTHING. While it should be nothing, somehow shopping carts are attracted to my bumpers and car body (has my car become magnetized over the years, or what?). It’s just so strange to me that these persnickety people, who are soooo careful with their cars, are so lazy, insane and reckless with shopping carts. Instead of putting them into the corral (and why is it a corral? They aren’t horses! Though they cause as much damage as a bucking bronco!) they leave them anywhere they can; between cars, in parking spaces, plus I hear that’s why they’re making another trip to the moon in 2018, to find ALL those missing shopping carts. Don’t bother, I want to say, just put my car on the rocket ship, the cars will all be attracted and come home of their own volition!

I propose they have a cart charge like they do at airports. You put in a dollar, and if you don’t return the cart back to where you got it, you loose the dollar. This way, people would put their carts back. Cart accidents would be minimal. On the other hand, with all the damage shopping carts do, we could also fingerprint the cart and then file a claim against the SHOPPER’s car insurance—since everyone knows money talks! Alternatively, we could find the cart-leaver’s car and let the cart roll down Mt. St. Helen into the side of it—so they know how us cart-returner’s feel every time we see damage to our car caused by a stampeding cart! Put them into their corrals—that’s what their there for!