Observation #3

Why don’t people put their shopping carts away?

I know you have seen this. I see it all the time and not just on a road trip.

You pull into a shopping center looking for a place to park. The parking lot is very full and places are hard to come by. You notice quite a few shopping carts scattered around the lot making it hard to park and even causing you to get out and move a cart before you can use a parking space.

As you walk towards the store you walk past the half empty shopping cart collection area while dodging stray carts along the way.

Then you see him!

This poor schmuck, probably a high schooler or someone working their way through college pushing a train of shopping carts all through the parking lot and gathering the strays that have been left all over the lot.

You go into the store feeling sorry for him and wishing there was something you could do.

I have started taking a few seconds and not only returning my cart to the gathering area, but also finding another cart stranded nearby and returning two to their rightful place.

Imagine if everyone did that. It would be a wonderful world.

This stuff goes on all the time.

Again, these are just observations, meandering thoughts of a retired person with nothing to do for miles on end but stare down a road and think.

But if this is the trend that we’re following as a society, if this self-centered attitude has become the prevailing thought and action of our way of life, then I’m almost glad that I’m a retired senior and won’t have to see what the world will look like in another twenty or thirty years.