Mad Ghetto Skillz: The Shopping Cart

Front lawn to an apartment building. Why not?

Like sneakers hanging off a power line, the lone shopping cart parked at an odd angle, (like the victim at the scene of a crime), is a sign that you're officially in the 'hood. Not exactly gentrification. What's always baffled me about this convoluted carelessness is that it takes wayyy more energy to push a shopping cart beyond the parking lot, up and down and over bumpy country terrain, than it is to use a relatively cheap and easy hand held cart for shopping and transporting. 

It's snowed and I hate shopping, so I'll block the sidewalk.

It takes a lot of work to be the kind of fuck up who ditches carts wherever the fuck you feel like. It's selfish, lazy, spoiled, and self-entitled, like people who spit on subway tracks or push their used gum under railings. Why?! Because that's the hood rat nature; complicated and contradictory, the core that's at the very essence of chronic dysfunction. If you asked someone who does this routinely, you'll get the typically common shit from them you already knew: they're disabled, their back hurts, they have a big family so they need a lot of groceries, they didn't have a choice, they just HAD TO, blah blah blah and why is it their fault? Well, it may not be (or, this being the hood, it probably is in some fucked way they'll try to cover up), but why is their damage our collective problem? 

"Do not enter"?! Fuck you!

Like any other seemingly random ghetto act, talking in circles to someone caught red-handed will get you nowhere fast, which is at the heart of disordered thinking. So, let me officially lay out some solutions for anyone struggling with courtesy as a concept, as a preemptive strike against incompetence: buy your own utility cart for shopping trips (see above suggestion), only buy what you can safely and comfortably carry (like I do), shop on the Internet and pay a delivery fee (if you can afford it), or have someone go with you (maybe a friend or a neighbor...you know, actually help each other out). 

You're welcome, community.