The Shopping Cart Theory

A little observational activity via the local grocery store parking lot.

So many things we perceive as one thing may well be another.

Case in point – late Sunday afternoon, I needed to run to Home Depot and pick up some stuff for the project we have going on at the house. As I was just about to leave with list in hand, Debbie let me know that we had just run out of the dog food Murph likes, so I said I would loop around by the grocery store and grab enough for a couple of days until we could put together a Sam’s Club order for our usual restocking.

Leaving the HD with 2X4’s, sheet rock screws and sheet rock loaded in my truck, I undocked, and made my way to our local Smith’s (owned by Kroger), and pulled into a parking spot.

Across from me, an orange Porsche Cayenne pulled into the parking space reserved for pickups from the store and out popped one of the most attractive women I have seen in a while.

With minimal makeup under her sunglasses and her brunette hair tied back in a ponytail, she was tall and lithe, early to mid-thirties, fashionably decked out in loose fitting (but tailored) jeans, a top that was not short but periodically exposed a few inches of a toned midriff as she walked. She wasn’t Vogue, more an immaculately dressed down and casual Garden and Gun, a slightly different flavor of stunning.

The timing was such that I fell in about ten steps behind as we both transited toward the store entrance, and I couldn’t help but notice she moved like a ballet dancer with a smooth and flowing walk that I assumed was a product of some form of dance training.

I’ve observed that dancers move differently from the rest of us – with perfect posture, they move with their entire bodies engaged, every movement from their feet, legs, hips, upper torso, arms, and mind synchronized in a symphony of coordinated movement. They move as if they are on stage even when there is no audience.

She was possessed of a fluidity straight out of a Beethoven or Bach composition.

I walk as if the top half of my body has no idea what the bottom half is doing, much like I swim – as if I am having a seizure or am fighting through a swimming pool size bowl of Jello.

My conclusion at the time was this was a classy, confident, beautiful, educated, affluent woman, probably successful, maybe married, maybe not (I’m not a creep, I didn’t get close enough to check for a ring) and likely had a privileged upbringing (which included dance classes). It was a decidedly attractive, positive image.

Look, I’ll never be accused of trying to redefine masculinity like Walz or Emhoff – I’m a traditional American male, but I am also old and harmless – not dead, and I notice stuff – but if I were in my thirties and unmarried, I would have turned on my full Rico Suave (those who know will know) mode and found a way to chat her up.

Once I got past the packaging, I began to wonder why she parked in the first spot reserved for pickup if she needed to go into the store.

Thanks to a text from the home office, I got a list of items needed and after spending an extra few minutes finding the stuff of which the location I knew from prior adventures in shopping and an extra fifteen minutes looking for Kings Hawaiian slider buns – of which the stock was depleted, I exited the store minutes before the Porsche driver did and was sitting in my not-Porsche 2013 F150 4WD, casually observing as I checked my list and as she rolled one of those small two tier carts to the back of her car.

Unloading groceries in the back of her Cayenne, I deduced the only reason to park there was that it was the closest spot available.

I thought of the “Shopping Cart Theory,” something that began to gain traction around 2020 or so. This theory purports to judge a person's ethics, values, and principles by whether they return a shopping cart to its designated cart corral or deposit area. It became a sort of informal litmus test for a person's capability of self-governing, as well as to judge the moral character of the subject.

Allegedly, if you feel compelled to return the cart and do, you are made of finer clay than people who don’t.

I began to wonder if the parking slot was an analog to the shopping cart. I mean there are handicapped spots, employee of the week/month, slots for veterans, and now there are order pickup spots, and those are often the most advantageous location in the lot – and many of them are typically vacant. Technically, I suppose a parking ticket could be given if a fully functioning dancer-being parked in the designated handicapped spots, but no cop is patrolling the local business parking lots for parking violators and as far as I know, there are no legal prohibition for the pickup spots.

In fact, other than personal virtue nothing keeps any random Cayenne owner from parking in any of these designated spots.

It could have been an erroneous take, but I began to wonder if her beauty is just skin deep. I began to wonder what side of the shopping cart theory she came down on, and if that made her a little less attractive.

Seems relevant as we select our next president.