Well, here's what's new today.....

Last week I did my good deed for the month of July by saving some evil little child's life. Of course, there was no Media Presence and I will remain unsung.

This idiot woman strolls up to the outside of the store with her A&P shopping cart, containing three bags of groceries and one child, sitting in the child seat. She gingerly parks the cart (with child) by the window and comes in. Thinks I, "Isn't he a little too big to be riding in there?" but says I nothing. (I'll digress to share the following: on more than several dozen occasions I have had to bolt outside when two suburban BMW housevives have been chattering and yammering to one another, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that their Demon Seed Offspring are pounding--POUNDING--with both open palms on the plate glass window. This window is twelve feet wide and eight feet high. ONE pane. Were one of these little Buttmunchers ever to break it, it would render their bodies literally unrecognizable. Anyway, several times I have asked said women--quite nicely--if they would, for their Loin Fruit's own protection, stop them from doing Olatunji impressions on my window. Well, if you can believe it, the STANDARD response is something along the lines of "Why don't you mind your own business," or "Don't give me that--if the window breaks, your insurance will cover it." I have had to poke more than a few of these flaming c***s in the sternum with a bony finger and point out to them exactly how gravity works and also that the insurance is less than likely to bring their miserable little cretin back to life after he's Julienned by two hundred pounds of flying glass. I have, on various occasions, offered the following retorts, and we quote:

1. "I'm not worried about the window. I can replace the window. I can't replace your child."
2. "They should put me in charge of parenting licenses." And:
3. (On one occasion, and only one, after the woman got unusually abusive and insisted that the window wouldn't kill her child) "I would sit down and take the time to explain to you how gravity works, but maybe instead you should just go home and look in the mirror." (That was my favorite one.)

Anyway, that very long digression was by way of explaining why I said nothing to the woman who had just walked into my store. I was helping her find her f***ing cordless phone battery and both of us forgot completely about the kid in the cart. Until I heard a muffled "MOMMY!" wafting through the window. The little angel had been kicking his legs or something to relieve the boredom, and the cart had hung a Louie and was heading for the curb.

The sidewalk is pitched out toward the parking lot (for drainage I guess) and is about six or seven feet deep. The curb is high--about eight inches. The kid, terrified, was standing up in the cart. If the front wheels went over the curb, the whole kit and kaboodle was going to flip over and land the little f*** on his miserable skull. That would certainly have been the end of that, or he would have perhaps been very very lucky to only suffer the most serious of concussions.

The woman's brain shut right down, like ya hear about sometimes in moments of panic. She was moving toward the door in literal slow motion--at least half a minute would have passed before she even got outside. So the Great American Hero--that's me--pushed her out of the way so that she slammed against the wall and slid to the floor; then I ran THROUGH the door which, fortunately, opened, and grabbed the handle on the cart just as the wheels were headed over the edge.

I don't know what exactly the best part of the whole thing was--the fact that I saved somebody's life or the fact that I got to knock one of these idiots on her fat ass and she had to THANK ME for it. Heady stuff.

[ADDENDUM, 2/7/2000: Faithful reader Jeff Webb has supplied us with a fabulous and very germane link. Please do go check out The Center For Shopping Cart Abuse Prevention. Thanks, Jeff!]