Drop Off In Aisle Twelve

We only needed a few items, and the race car carts were sopping wet. So we settled on a shopping basket. We hobbled through the store, checking items off the list while I carried the weight of the basket and she held on to the other side like she was running the show. As we headed up the last aisle to loop back to the cashier, a man pointed in the opposite direction, and shot me an "aren't-you-seeing-this" look.

I wondered for a second. But it all made sense when he called out, "Hey! You lost one!"

I turned around to see him pointing to a toddler who had wandered a few feet ahead of her mother in the next aisle over.

"Oh, you mean--oh--not mine," I replied.

And I laughed my way to the check out line.

It just struck me as funny that I got the raised eyebrow from a stranger for not keeping track of (or control of) a kid that wasn't even mine. And then it struck me as funny how silly he must have felt pointing out to ME that I lost a kid in front of the kid's REAL MOTHER, who had just rolled up behind him to witness the scene. Heh.

In the checkout line, I asked Dani a half dozen times to leave the basket. She kept saying "But it doesn't GO HERE!" I signed the screen and grabbed the bags as she explained, "We can't leave him here. He is lost from his ba'ket pamily!"

So we did what any mother does who wants to escape the store sometime before 2012. We took the blasted basket back to his blasted family. So rest assured, Random Guy in the Grocery Store, I can't even get away with leaving a shopping basket at the checkout, let alone losing one of my children in aisle 12.