The Things We Do For Snapple

Picture this:

A young woman walks down 5th Avenue in Brooklyn late on a Friday afternoon, listening to her iPod and feeling pretty satisfied with herself for fitting her Target purchases into her big red cart that she usually reserves for trips to the laundromat. Mostly, she is just looking forward to getting home and enjoying one of the Snapple Diet Peach Iced Teas that she just bought in a 12 pack, saving herself and her roommate/co-Snapple-addict a couple bucks.

Her stride is interrupted when the front wheels of the cart strike an uneven crack in the sidewalk. The world starts moving in slow motion and the woman realizes with resignation that not only is the cart going down, but she is going down with it. Soon the cart is lying flat on the ground, the woman is lying stomach-down on top of it, and the 12 pack is hemorrhaging (sp?) iced tea. After a significant amount of cursing and detangling herself from her headphone wires, she spends the next five to ten minutes rescuing the uninjured Snapple bottles from shards of broken glass. Good news: 9 bottles were salvaged. Also fortunate that this happened in front of a dumpster, which was a convenient place to put the wet cardboard container and the remnants of the teas that didn't make it, and that so far there is no evidence of tiny glass shards embedded in my, I mean her, fingers.

This may be the most dramatic of mishaps involving the shopping cart, but is by no means the first. The jury is still out on the value of the cart, which, while it does save your muscle power, is heavy, awkward, and kind of expensive. Please share any opinions on the shopping cart, pro or con, if you have them. And next time you see me, don't forget to ask to see the new cool lumpy bruises on my shins.