For those of you who don't know, I dislike Target. I know, I know. Many of you are gasping in shock and re-reading that sentence because, certainly I didn't mean it!
Sorry, it's true. Shopping at Target is just impulse buying at it's worst. You can't come out of Target without spending $100. Plus there's no running in for something really quick. No, Target is always a process.
I try to go as little as possible, but sometimes a trip there is unavoidable.
For some reason, I made the mistake of making my first outing with three small children a Target outing.
There is a Target right by our house, but for some reason I decided to go to this other Target still relatively close but a little farther away. This Target is recently redone and pretty nice. It does have a Starbucks in it which makes it slightly better. However since there are no cup holders in the carts, walking around, monitoring three children and pushing a cart while holding a Starbucks really isn't possible for someone with a mere two arms. Seriously, think outside the box people.
Anyway, we go into Target, get the 3 things on our list as well as about 10 other items since Target is designed to increase impulse buying exponentially. We check out and get ready to walk out the door when I notice it's raining.
Fan-freakin'-tastic.
Three children, one who is an infant only a few weeks old, and several bags of stuff.
I decide to make a run for it. Melody and Charlie are both in the cart and I grab Jack's hand and tell him to walk very fast with me. We make it to the car, I grab Charlie's carrier, snap him in, throw the bags in as Jack climbs in and then grab Melody. As I place her in the car, her foot slips and she falls out on her head. Yes, you read that right, smack on her head. I pick her up and jump in the car with her (as it's now raining harder and I'm pretty wet and cold) and shut the door. (She was alright and just a little scared.)
Now is probably a good time to mention that for some reason Target's parking lot is on a hill. Seriously, what kind of building planner thought that was a good idea. Um, yeah, let's built a store where 90% of the people use carts to shop and put the parking lot on a hill. And not a slight hill either, it's pretty steep!
So, after I closed the door, I'm pretty sure my cart rolled away. I have no idea where it went and since my baby had fallen flat on her face I really couldn't care less.
However I'm assuming it bumped another car.
I'm assuming this because a few seconds later some punk 20 something kid with an earring came up and tapped on my window to inform me that he saw me "pushing carts in the parking lot".
I informed him that I pushed nothing and that my baby had fallen on her face and I didn't give a rats A55 where my cart went after that. And for that matter, if they didn't expect carts to roll around they shouldn't have built the Target on a freakin' hill!
He then informs me he's going to call the police and report me.
Um, obviously he's never dealt with a wet, cold, sleep-deprived, lactating, still-fat-from-baby-weight-and-not-happy-about-it mom before.
I opened the door and told him that would be wonderful and when they get here they could go ahead and arrest him for harassing me. And that if he continued to harass me while I waited for them to arrest him that would be OK because I had enough adrenaline and hormone surging through my body to flatten his A55 right then and there.
He got the message and just turned and scurried out of there.
So there you go, my first outing by myself as a mommy of three and I get busted for pushing carts.
Check out more true stories at Once Upon a Miracle.
