Once you have kids, there are a few things that you wish had never been invented:
1) Stuffed animal claw machines
2) Food with cartoon characters on it
3) Arcades
4) Drugs
5) These:
The above is an average sized one from the grocery store, which is bad enough. Over at Lowes they have these seven foot long blue race cars that weigh about 400 lbs empty, never mind after you load it with your child, chainsaws, sledgehammers and whatever else I think people buy at home improvement stores. God help anybody that gets in your way when you're navigating around corners - it's like you're steering the back end of a fire engine.
I have occasionally pushed my son around in one of these at Stop & Shop, and I have occasionally ended up jammed in the checkout lane. Seriously, THEY DON'T FIT THRU THE CHECKOUT LANE.
This was me:
This was me:
"Oh you just have to back it in," said the cashier after I was already hopelessly fucking stuck. Thanks for the tip. I basically destroyed the gum and candy rack, as well as a display of beef jerky, trying to unjam myself. Finally I backed it in. Okay, now what? Frontwards or backwards, I'm still trapped at the back of the cart and can't reach my groceries because there's a CHILD'S OUTDOOR TOY CAR blocking access to the front. Am I going to need to ask my kid to get out of the Coupe, climb up onto the roof, and hand me each item? Is that what they want me to do?
I obviously can't reach the stuff by squeezing around the sides, because to do that I would need to have the body mass of a paper doll. Do we not live in a society where half of the population is obese? What are all the other mothers doing? Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe there's an Eject button that I don't know about, and you press it and the Cozy Coupe detaches and your kid just drives away and meets you out in the parking lot. Otherwise, I just don't understand it.
Does anyone else detest these things as much as I do?
