The Shopping Cart

Perhaps you'll laugh, perhaps you'll agree or maybe you'll just think I'm slipping a little. Either way, this is my rant inspired by a shopping cart.

Yesterday I went to Wal*Mart to buy some hand wraps for boxing. I was parked two spots over from the cart return. Upon leaving the store with my small purchase (okay I ended up grabbing one or two other things in the process). In the time I had been in the store someone had parked beside me - only one spot over from the cart return.

As I got in and started my car I noticed a middle aged woman placing the few things that she had bought from her shopping cart into the car. I decided to just wait a bit before pulling out - not really sure why. I watched as she walked into the empty spot right beside the cart return and left her now empty shopping cart in the empty spot.

I wanted to scream. I'm not joking. I could feel my blood pressure rising and, not wanting to be known as the crazy cart lady, I pulled out and left without saying anything. I wanted to, oh how I wanted to. And what I wanted to say was this:

It's five extra steps to the cart return that you are abandoning your shopping cart next to. Why? Is it that you have so little respect for your surroundings, for the property of other people that you would rather just abandon your cart where it can get blown around by the wind and block a parking spot?

People wonder why kids seem to have so little respect for the world. It's those little things, those unthinking examples that people like you represent. Sure, it's just a cart in Wal*Mart parking lot - go ahead and think that if you want, but then you're still a part of the problem. It is the problem that it's better to take the easy route. It's easier to not think than be considerate.

I was raised that you put things back where they belong, that you clean up after yourself, that you do not litter because to do the opposite shows a lack of respect for the environment and for others. They are small, tiny little gestures, but they mean so much. And our children are watching us. Watching and learning how not show these little courtesies.

And we wonder why kids are the way they are. It's not the big solutions we need to start with. It's the little ones. Those gestures of respect and courtesy that should be an unthinking part of our lives, but these are things that seem to have been forgotten.

So tell me lady, where is your respect? Where is your courtesy? What sort of example are you really setting for everyone else out there, for those who look up to you. Think about it because it starts with the little things.

And the thing is, I really do believe this. It maybe rant-y, but it's those little things that I was raised to do and sometimes I screw up and forget, but it's amazing how big those little things can be.