Target Locked

One of the reasons why I look forward to blogging in an old-new way is because of days like this. Which is just about every day. But this one includes a trip to The Twilight Zone.

Marissa and I are fortunate to live five minutes up the street from the Happiest Place on Earth and five minutes down the street from the second Happiest Place on Earth: Target.

We went to Target late this morning expecting a short trip just for a few essentials. Well, we live in a friendly neighborhood now, and strangers like to make eye-contact and strike up conversations. And that's not even the weird part of the story!

Marissa was pushing our cart out and suddenly she stopped. I turned to face her with the whole "what the fuck" expression, since our car was still halfway across the parking lot ('cause I thought it would be good for us to walk).

"I'm stuck."

"What do you mean you're stuck?" I asked. I went to grab the cart towards me, and nearly ripped off my arm.

The cart was, like, magnetically locked to the ground. I suddenly had a vision of that Nic Cage movie, Face/Off, where the prisoners feet are magnetized to the floor.

But seriously, how could our cart be magnetized to the concrete? Surely a wheel was simply stuck. We were on an aisle with a return cart area with carts actually returned, so I had Marissa go grab another one to transfer our bags and EIGHT gallons of water over to.

We were at the very end corner of a lane. Unfortunately, we were right behind a parked car. And we now had the attention of some customers. Marissa had brought the new cart right up behind our stuck cart and we reloaded and continued on our way...for about five inches.

The cart was stuck. It would not move forward or backward. I'm now in the middle of the parking lane curled up in a fetal position, sucking my thumb.

"Can we lift the cart?" Asked my brilliant daughter.

"YES!" I answered, thankful I did Wii Fit that morning.

We lift the cart (with EIGHT gallons of water) and the FREAKIN' cart is PULLED back down by some UNKNOWN force. Now I want to RUN AWAY from the shopping cart.

I start grabbing bags and GALLONS of water and yelling at Marissa to stay with the cart. She's yelling behind me she doesn't want to be left alone with the cart, but I'm already halfway to my car. I see two parked police cars and I look to see if the officers are sitting in 'em, because, you know, I want to tell them that our groceries are being HELD HOSTAGE BY ALIENS LIVING UNDERGROUND.

The cruisers are empty, so I run to my car and toss everything into the backseat and drive over to Marissa. She is standing there trying to look as nonchalant as one can look while holding onto a shopping cart that is STUCK TO THE GROUND. A customer right across from our cart pulls out just as I pull up. Thankfully, people are cool around here, and doesn't cuss Marissa out for NOT moving the cart out of the way. I pull into the empty spot and we haul ass getting everything from the cart into the car.

A woman happened to walk by us at this point, and I run over to her.

"Have you ever shopped here before?" I shrieked. I don't really want to hear her answer, I just want her to witness the magnetic field. She tries to push and pull the cart -- and it moves -- about five inches.

"Maybe Target has it magnetized to avoid carts from being stolen." She suggests, but even as the words come out of her mouth, she is shaking her head. We're still very much within the Target parking lot.

Marissa and I finally get into the car and we're soaking in sweat. It's not even hot outside, in fact, rain is in the forecast.

"We were doing so good! We were doing so good!" Marissa kept chanting. Yes, we were. We had an awesome conversation with an older guy wearing a Paul McCartney t-shirt and Beatles hat, we had found everything we needed at a good price, and we didn't have to wait in line. Then we stepped into some screwed-up X-Files episode.

As I left the shopping center, I hit the steering wheel with my fist.
"I forgot to take a picture of the carts!"

Marissa looked over at me and said, "We already looked strange enough!"

I'm damn curious if anyone has been able to move those carts.