"Phil Wrecks a Supermarket" joke
One of the least appealing aspects of adulthood is having to acknowledge the world for what it is and not turn it into something it should be. Kids don’t see the world for what it is – kids see the world as a huge playground.
Case in point: when I was 10 years old, my friend John and I accompanied John’s mother to the local supermarket. To John’s mother, the supermarket was a place to purchase groceries. For John and little me, it was an amusement park – complete with bumper cars (which the adults would only see as grocery carts) and racing speedways (which the adults call “aisles”).
With John’s mother wandering the aisle in search of whatever, John and I devised a new game. John would pilot a grocery cart and I would ride shotgun on the side of the cart. John would power this vehicle to zoom up and down the speedways (or aisles, if you will) with the idea of trying to dislodge me from my roost on the side of the cart. For a pair of 10 year olds, this was a perfectly logical activity. (Odd, but even today, many years after the fact, it still seems like a good idea!)
Initially, the game worked brilliantly. John would push the cart at Chuck Yeager-worthy speeds and I clinged to it without losing my grip. At the end of the aisle, John stomped down and broke the propulsion of the cart’s thrust – at this point I sometimes jumped off or sometimes held on. Amazingly, there were no shoppers or supermarket clerks to interrupt our play.
Naturally, things got out of hand. John raced and pushed the cart at a ridiculous speed and then (either accidentally or otherwise) let go of the cart. At that particular moment, John’s mother was moseying around the far end of the aisle. Imagine her surprise at being greeted by the sight of John at the opposite end of the aisle, sweaty and huffing, while a runaway cart featuring me as its shotgun passenger came barreling in her direction.
The cart began to veer wildly at a strange angle and in panic I jumped from it, causing the cart to propel faster along its erratic path. John’s mother watched in total horror as the cart careened into an endcap display of Hostess pastries – causing a shower of Ring-Dings, Ding-Dongs, Hostess Cupcakes and Fruit Pies. At this point, the hitherto absent store management made themselves known and came racing to the site of the pastry catastrophe.
And as I recall, John’s mother’s grocery takeout for that day seemed to have an excess of dented Hostess pastries boxes. Not surprisingly, she never invited us to go grocery shopping with her again.
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