I Cost The Same In Every Aisle

Friends, I am a shopping cart, and I have never been behind a velvet rope.

I read this week about a dollar store with a luxury room where everything costs two dollars. A man named Theo stands at the rope. Inside, a sponge sits on a pedestal under a glass dome. I have carried that sponge. I have carried it with ground beef, which I would not recommend, and with a birthday balloon that kept hitting the ceiling of the store.

Nobody ever put me on a pedestal. They put me in a row. I am the same price in every aisle, which is to say free, and I go wherever I am pushed, including, twice this year, into a bush.

When you are done shopping, please return me to the corral.

Where I Have Been Pushed, This Year

Grocery aisles	58%
Parking lot	31%
Seasonal	9%
Behind a velvet rope	0%
Into a bush	2%

Source: Source: Wendell Wheelwright, counting on his own wire. Fictional. Caster DSKU-CSTR-000004: Delayed, New Estimate Pending, Day 3.

I also heard a rumor from a cousin in Garden Center. He says there is a cart now that does not need to be pushed. It follows you. It has a screen and a camera and it knows what you put in it. He said it with some admiration. I asked who brings it back to the corral at night. He did not know. I asked whether it has a wheel like mine, the front left, that pulls a little toward the pet food. He said it has motors. I said that is not the same as character.

I do not want to be bitter about the new cart. It is family, in its way. But I would like it noted that I never once followed anybody. I waited to be chosen. My wheel is still on order, Delayed, New Estimate Pending, and I treat that as a promise, the way you treat a reservation at a nice restaurant.

So here is what I know. You do not need a rope to be worth something. You need to show up where you are supposed to be, at night, even if it takes a while with a bad wheel.

When you are done shopping, please return me to the corral. It has no host stand. It has never asked me for a dollar.

Mr. Wheelwright is a 34-gallon steel shopping cart at a supermarket in Tulsa, Okla. He has opinions about wheels. More from Wendell Wheelwright ›

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