Well, it’s come to this again.

 

          We have a phantom grocery cart dumper in our neighborhood. I wish I knew who the hell the dumper was because whoever it is seems to think I’m into collecting grocery carts. What the freakin’ heck!

 

          Sometime during the night some nitwit rammed a Safeway cart into the oleander hedge located in my front yard. Two years ago another Safeway cart mysteriously appeared parked in my desert landscape. I posted a photo of it on Facebook and my friends thought it was the funniest thing that ever happened. It was, kind of, except it had to be hauled back to the grocery store. I called Safeway about it. They said it would take a few days to a week before someone could come retrieve the thing. But who wants a grocery cart parked in their front yard? So both times, under the cover of darkness, we had to load the heavy, difficult-to-manage thing into the back of a SUV and haul it back to Safeway. 

 

          Seriously, what is wrong with people? Are they that bored that they have to steal a grocery cart and dump it in my front yard? And that’s another thing. Was it in fact dumped in my yard or did a neighbor sneak it out of their yard and conveniently roll it into mine because they knew I would return the darn thing? I’m beginning to feel targeted. 

 

     I seriously doubt a homeless person is behind this cart dumping business. I have never seen a homeless person in my neighborhood hauling their possessions around in a grocery cart. Maybe they have but I haven’t seen one. I’ve seen Q-Tips (white-haired senior citizens, an expression from the younger generation) hauling stuff around in golf carts. There’s a golf course down the road from my place. I’ve seen a ladder, a big water container, a chainsaw, bags of groceries, a box fan, and grandma, in the back or front seat of a golf cart but never a grocery cart. So after I finished ranting and raving about lamebrain idiots with no life, I got to wondering if this was some kind of message for me to ponder. Was I being sent ideas from the happy hunting ground? Ideas that I could possibly use in my stories? So I asked a few friends what they thought and if they could send me their ideas. Here’s what I got.

 

          How about dead hobos trolling neighborhoods for souls. The grocery carts are their collection bins and like the grocery stores, they get reward points (or whatever) for the number of souls they bring in.

 

          Okay, here’s my idea. You don’t know it but you soon discover that the street you live on is a race track for the dead. Nighttime, the dead haul ass. All activity of the dead ceases at dawn’s arrival, and the cart reverts back to its physical earthy form.  G, are you offering a prize?

 

          Seriously? Heck no. I never said anything about a prize.

 

          How’s this. Evil people who have died have had their judgement day. They are consigned to some kind of chain-gang from hell. Their punishment is to pick up garbage left by the living. An unheard chime rings out the beginning and ending of their work hours. If the living listened carefully they can hear the “Sanitation Department of the Dead” badmouthing the living for being rotten polluters and inconsiderate beings. Maybe they can be some kind of roadkill pick up gang. They use grocery carts to haul rotting corpses away.

 

          Early morning, the dark hours, is the time of The Hideous Rowers. (You can use that title. You’re welcome.) Grocery carts are their boats, femur bones serve as oars. As they row, they sing “Row Row Row your smelly dead ass gently down to hell.” And so on.  How’s that?

 

          Really? (And this is from a relative of mine)

 

          That’s it. No more. And again, my no-help-friends, I never offered a prize but thanks for the ideas. I won’t use any of them.