Give me a moment to process…
Some shopping trips with the Mad Madster are better than others and some are downright painful.
Sometimes a series a events collide leading a father to abandon $60 worth of groceries in a store parking lot to deal with his mischievous one-shoed daughter.
There is one grocery store in Jersey City that we shop at for only a few items at a time. The reason for this is that the shopping carts can’t go more than ten feet out of the entrance because they are blocked in by metal barricades. This critical fact seemed to have slipped my mind as Maddie and I were checking out with far too much to carry.
It all started with a BAD checkout. The rocket scientist bagging the groceries only single-bagged a sack containing a 2-liter bottle and and some other items with sharp corners. I failed to notice this because Maddie was trying to pull every item off the belt before the cashier could scan it.
I knew I was in trouble the second we got outside where there was a homeless gentleman was asking to carry my bags. I declined his kind offer and set into the parking lot with a sense of purpose.
We made it about 20 steps when the shopping bag with the the 2-liter bottle blew apart showering the contents all over the parking lot.
COOOOL!
For some reason, this sent Maddie into a kicking frenzy. Her right foot scored a direct hit on a second bag blasting it apart with more items showering the ground along with her sneaker.
It’s a party now!
Maddie wants to get down and play in the carnage below and the car is no closer than 100 yards away.
Time to leave the groceries where they were (bye bye Maddie and I said together) as we walked away to get in the car.
Once the Mads was safely strapped in, we drove over to the mess where there was a nice man defending our pile of groceries from some curious homeless helpers.
I thanked him, hoping our adventure was over, but Maddie had more games to share with her dad.
Of course there were no parking spaces near our home, so we had to park across the busy street. We parked and the only shopping bag I grabbed to take upstairs with Maddie was her milk. We took two steps from the car when the one-shoed girl seized the bag and swung it towards her head. I had to adjust quickly, but Maddie had a death grip on the bag. I put her down to free the bag, when she whipped the sack across the sidewalk rupturing the third bag of the young morning.
At that point, there was really nothing left to do but take a few pictures.
Am I daddy’s little helper or what? Want some raisins?
