Little Rascals

For the past five or six weeks, I’ve avoided shopping. Who wants to walk the length of the WalMart Supercenter on crutches?

I did try grocery shopping once or twice. You can’t walk into a grocery store without seeing a line of Rascals — sit-down shopping carts with electric motors. Since being on crutches, though, I’ve discovered a dirty little secret: most of the time, those carts don’t work. Of the three at the Winn Dixie on I-55 North, only one works — and managers couldn’t find the key for it. Brookshire’s Grocery has four Rascals parked next to the shopping carts; the day I was there, none of these had been charged up.

What a pleasure, then, to discover an entire fleet of working Rascals at the local Target. I plopped down in the seat and drove myself all over the store. I bought everything from Chocolate Creme Oreos to linen shirts. In fact, as a way of saying, "Thanks for keeing the Rascals charged and functional," I bought a lot more than I’d planned on buying.

With an eye toward picking up some items for the new house, I returned to Target yesterday. I cripped into the store, approached the shopping carts … and saw, to my complete disappointment, that every single Rascal was gone, save one. I climbed into it and thumbed the power switch; nothing happened. Crestfallen, I stuck my crutches back under my arms and began making my slow way back to the housewares.

Not five minutes later, I hear a woman’s voice behind me: "Sir? Sir?"

I turn around. A Target employee — one of the cashiers, I think — is coming up behind me in a Rascal.

"I saw you trying to get in one of these," she says. "It was still plugged in, so the power switch didn’t work. I knew that was what had happened, so I unplugged it and thought I’d see if you’d still like to use it."

I blink. "Wow. Yes. Thanks!"

She gets out and hands the controls over to me. "I’m sorry it took me so long to get here with it. These things just weren’t made to go all that fast!"

I was stunned. Was this young woman actually bringing me a Rascal without being asked to … and apologizing for it taking five minutes for her to do so?

My crutches will be gone in two weeks or so … but guess who’ll be shopping at Target a lot more often long after that?