The Unreported Dangers of Grocery Shopping

While at my local Safeway a few days ago, I narrowly escaped my demise on three separate occasions.

Setting aside the irony of multiple near-death experiences at a store with “Safe” in its name, I feel it’s my moral obligation to warn the general public about the dangers I recently faced. Shopper, beware!

It began in the produce section, and as is the case with many a produce section, the aisles are wider than those in the rest of the store: I believe it was the ample space in the area that saved me. As I reached out for a mid-sized russet, I narrowly missed being sideswiped by a boy DARTING AROUND SHOPPERS AND CARTS ON HIS ROLLER SKATE SHOES.

Let me be clear: this was not an open-air, farmer’s market setting—it was a fully enclosed grocery store. And the little runt was recreating (the original) Rollerball in the aisles.

I looked around for the parent/guardian, but saw no one with the proper degree of humiliation and/or anger sweeping his/her face.

Nice.

The kid was long gone by the time I was able to shake off the startle and return to my potatoes, and that was fine by me: I might have stuck a russet in his path had he continued.

I’d forgotten the affair by the time I headed down the bread aisle, but roller-kid struck again: this time, I was turning back towards my cart to deposit my loaf when he skirted between it and me.

There was no one else in the aisle, and I realized the skater was speeding through the store unsupervised.

Nice.

(Where is a decent serial killer of children when you need one?)

Normally, there is an employee around every corner, and my first hope was one would be plowed down by the kid before too much more time passed. If that didn’t work out, I was determined to report the activity to the next smock-wearing individual I could find. (Unless I found the child’s parent/guardian first—in which case I anticipated losing momentary control of my cart: whether I hit the kid or his supervisor being irrelevant.)

Several aisles later, having neither seen nor been brushed back by the mad-skater, I felt certain he’d been stopped, injured, or banished. Oh, sweet safety.

The coup de grace occurred while I maneuvered my cart from a particularly busy aisle into the main thoroughfare that leads to the checkout aisles. As I pulled forward, there he was for a third time speeding his way in my direction; however, this time, the path behind me was full, so I couldn’t put my cart into reverse. His eyes got wide, and he tried to apply his non-existent brakes.

[The remaining portion of this entry has been written in slow-motion to allow you the best view of the action.]

As the raucous little boy edged closer and closer to the metal barrier that was my cart, I spied his guardian and noted she was engrossed in a cell-phone conversation: she too was headed straight for me. [Cue evil laugh track.]

The smile on my face spread in blissful unison with the look of terror spreading across the boy’s mug, and I breathed deeply of the aromatic smell of victory as the skating menace hit my cart mid-speed. Almost immediately, the little monster was pinned by his inattentive mother who sandwiched her angel between my cart and hers.

Very nice.