The Fibromyalgia Autobiography: We Are the Brave

I don’t know what to do or even how to write. The pain is so bad that it permeates every second of every day; I get no respite. If I thoroughly distract myself with something consuming, such as drawing every fibre and curve of the poinsettia plant on the table, I can sometimes, most fleetingly, eliminate the pain from my top-of-mind consciousness. Even then, I know it’s there. I know it’s glowering at me, demanding that attention must be paid. How dare I presume to ignore it. It should know that I’m most decidedly its prisoner, and ignoring it is impossible. I’ve merely placed it in the second shelf of things I cannot forget.

Imagine internally repeating a word or a string of digits, something you know intimately well, over and over and over. Your name. The numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42. It would seem like madness. So does the word I repeat, but it is more of a tome than a word, a dull and singular autobiography that tells but one incessant story. I repeat it while making coffee, while reading Prince Caspian to my eight-year-old son, while hugging my 11-year-old son goodnight, while I’m making a joke to my 13-year-old son about the “sentient basketball” his kindly and generous godfather gifted him for Christmas. 


(STOP. Okay, the sentient basketball is this basketball that links with an app on your smartphone and it tracks all the shots you take and calculates the trajectory of the ball and it’s seriously smarter than all of you. I have suggested that it may devolve and start shouting things at my son such as “Missed the hoop AGAIN. Sad! Loser!” by which point it will have detained our entire family in a special “camp” while it bounces recklessly across a keyboard linked to its Twitter feed. But I digress.)

The story in my head has the word “pain” is embedded in the title of every chapter, in every monotonous sentence, and in the cliffhanger at chapter’s end. Synonyms for “pain” could of course be employed here: ache, agony, spasm, torment, misery, distress. I’m afraid that, while in pain, I’m not even clever enough to call upon any of these vocabulary words. It’s all simply pain. It makes for extremely dull reading: “This book sucks. One star, but I’d give it a zero if I could! Sad! Loser!”

(But if I were to be imaged and mapped as an electrical grid, I would be very exciting indeed. I would tell a strange story. Spasms, and flares along the knots and hubs, and bright loci, all firing, firing, firing, until the world’s end.)

Even as a prisoner of the very boring and pedestrian pain, I sometimes still think: I wonder if I made this all up. Because if I did, I can fix it. I know I can. Many doctors said it was all in my head before I was diagnosed. They could be right! I will fight like a wounded dog in a ditch to fix this. Because I have beautiful people in my life who love me, and they are counting on me to be brave and beautiful and to ignore the pain. (Sometimes, when I pass a mirror, I think the expression I wear resembles that of a hurt animal that cannot speak and dumbly wishes to be put out of its misery. My friend, the veterinary surgeon, sees this look all the time, before she expires the animal. And then I tend to think that I’m really quite good-looking. And someone this ridiculously good-looking cannot possibly be sick, right? I also have great legs and really decent biceps and fine, upstanding boobs. But I digress.)

If this is all in my head, then all I need to do is relax. Breathe more. Take some Aleve. Do yoga. Stop worrying. Swim when I can. Hot water. Pay attention to my posture. Take supplements. Use the Miracle Balls. Ahem, this is really a thing—“miracle balls” do help.) This was honestly supposed to be part of a different post, the post that listed “All the Things That Help Me With My Fibromyalgia.” I don’t want to suggest that these things don’t help! In fact, they certainly have. The problem is that they are temporary. Maybe I just need to use these remedies more. 

But just when I’m exulting in the moment of finally selecting a new “inner dialogue” volume from my shelves—perhaps its “Just Keep Moving! You Are Fantastic!” or “Bonus Energy Surprise! You Won the Fucking Lottery Today!”—I reach out and pluck out that sad, dog-eared volume on pain whose author looks like she got whacked with a cudgel studded with stabby Christmas ornaments. Whacked hard in the knees, ribs, shoulders, back, elbows, ankles, fingers, collarbones. Still smiling, wanly. Her author photo tells the whole story. She’s an absolute expert on her subject. Not many people can see her pain, because she’s smiling well enough. But I do.

It’s so very hard to choose another book.

But I will. I must.

How do we go on? People who have Fibromyalgia are in constant, sometimes unimaginable pain. Some are in worse pain than I am, which I cannot imagine. How do we even face the day? How do we read a book, or hug our children, or cook dinner, or fold the laundry? How do we commit to jobs that require us to smile at people? How do we shop for groceries and actually return our carts to the cart corrals (please tell me you do; Fibromyalgia is no excuse here.) How do we continue to stand out in the cold wind and gas up the car? How do we limp down the driveway to collect the mail? How do we sit in a chair, as I do, and type out blog posts that will garner us no favors or fame or money?

Because we are the brave. No matter how bleak it seems, we will never just read one simple story. We can acknowledge that we have read, and will read again, that dreadful autobiography: The one that I call Pain. It will always and always sit on our shelves. But it isn’t who we are. We are a great  library of poetry and truth and submarines and whelks and tangerines and fireworks and ocelots and 17th-century history and rockets to the moon. We are here for a reason, and we will be called upon when it counts. Because we already know what heartbreak feels like and we have been brave and strong for so very long. We will never give up, never stand down, never falter.  

If there is to be a resistance, I will be at the forefront. I am not scared. Why would I be? I am well-versed in pain. Maybe I could finally place that awful, boring volume called Pain way down to the fifth or sixth shelf, well below the volumes of Dignity and Honor.

Postscript: Please. Return your carts to the cart corral. Or even to the very door of the store. We aren't the kind of people who leave our carts parked upon the curb, even when we are bone-tired. The carts do tend to get away and cause mayhem.

The Great Shopping Cart Massacre

I used to spend a fair amount of my time stalking shopping carts and photographing them. (I intended to say 100 percent of my time, but that sounded weird so I edited it.)

Winner of "Best in Show" at the International Shopping Cart Exposition, 2011. (Domesticated.)

Why did the carts fascinate me? For one, they are sly. They are quick. They can be quite savage, and can attack without warning. Yet they are also lovely, wild creatures, often filled with candy wrappers and empty bottles of Night Train Express.

The afterlife for me looks like...a shopping cart?

And they migrate! Once a single shopping cart infiltrates a neighborhood, you can be sure that more will follow, as if drawn by the scent of their kind. And as for their reproductive capacity—well, shopping carts will try to mate with almost anything, such as the door of your brand-new car. Basically, they are used to snuggling together in close proximity and, like a sausage and a bagel, fit together like magic. Traditional shopping carts are the randiest of the food and goods transportation mechanisms, unlike the "Four Wheel Deluxe Rolling Thingy," below, which hasn't even bumped wheels with another cart-like entity for at least a year. Sad.

But my scientific interests took a turn a while back, and I took a break to pursue some other topics. My recent scholarly publications include:

Chlorinated Pools: How Come There Is No Plant Life? (The Journal of Well-Funded Yet Incredibly Pointless Studies, 2013)

Wallpaper Moves So Slowly Because It Doesn't Want to be Caught So it Can Kill You in Your Sleep (Reader's Digest Large-Print Editions, 2014)

Goodbye, Doo Doo. Where You Goin' Now? Can I Come, Too? (To be published by The Golden Box for Young Readers, 2016) *Reviewers may request ARCs by writing to me in the comments section of this blog.

Anyway! All of these ventures were deeply boring for one reason or another. Except for the children's book, which was not boring at all but still gives me the shakes and the willies. Have you ever been inside a sewer? All in the name of authentic research, but it's not very nice.

And then today I came across this horror—a multitude of shopping carts, dead in a ditch! Had they flung themselves to their doom because people had been buying too many heavy objects, like pumpkins (out of season) and Big Fat Loaves of Bread and Bacon Bricks? (Note: I purchased a Bacon Brick at De Ciccos on Halstead Avenue last week but no carts were harmed during the event. Bacon Bricks should be the subject of another post. What, you've never bought a bacon brick?!)

The humanity!

What led to this massacre? Please, shield your children's eyes, because these photos are disturbing.

Gravely injured; no hope for recovery. 

I can't even bear to look. Heartbreaking.

Going to kill self now.

Ahhh...glglggjjfjfjjk. Choking on tears.

What led to this horrible event? Was it because I ABANDONED the shopping carts for "more interesting" pursuits?

But no, we must not blame ourselves. In fact, I think this is clearly the work of the notorious Pimples Tuscadero, disgruntled "Stop 'n' Shop" bagger, age 22. Vengeance shall be mine. Oh yes, it shall.

You have not died in vain, my beauties. I will chronicle your majesty once again. Just as soon as I finish my work on Basement Crickets of the 21st Century.

You might also like:

http://thepartypony.blogspot.com/2008/08/nature-red-in-tooth-and-handlebar.html

And a whole lotta my older posts, too. Get to it. Life is short, and awfully sweet.

A La Cart!

As a longtime observer of shopping carts in the wild, I was intrigued to discover an influx of foreign carts into our neighborhood. Suspecting that these carts were here not to mix and mingle and learn English, but were bent on bad business, I faithfully recorded their secretive plans and movements and had their comments translated (at considerable personal expense). The startling results reveal rich cultural differences between American and foreign carts. No plots were revealed.

Oh, vous délicieux phallique jaune objet. Je suis violant vous maintenant ! Oui, me violer vous pensez-vous ? Je suis un panier d'achat et suis très amoureux. Va-va-va-voom ! N'est-ce pas?

(Oh, you delicious phallic yellow object. I am raping you now! Yes, do you feel me raping you? I am a shopping cart, and am very amorous. Va-va-va-voom! N'est-ce pas?)

Ich bin Vizened und alt, und Sie werden nicht löschen Sie mich aus diesem Pol. Nein! Nehmen Sie die Hände weg meine Gestricken Kleider! Ich habe Stiefeln im Innern von Mein selbst, und Wille verwenden es, um Ze Sheeet von Ihnen!

(I am vizened and old, and you will not remove me from this pole. Nein! Take hands off my crocheted garments! I have jackboot in interior of mein self, and will use it to kick ze sheeet out of you!)

Gehen Sie weg!

(Go avay!)

Soy un tonto baile. Voy a Remolino y Molinete y mostrar mi tren de aterrizaje a los chicos, y voy a vestir un tutú rosado. Me deja en el Salón de baile!

(I am a fool for the dance. I am to whirl, and twirl, and show my undercarriage to the boys, and I will wear a pink tutu. Show me into the hall where the dancing takes place!)

Yo, man. Pass me een rook. Een rook. Ja. Ik had veel te veel Miller Lites. Fuck. Ik ga te kotsen.

(Yo, man. Pass me a smoke. A smoke. Yeah. I had way too many Miller Lites. Fuck. I'm going to puke.)

After the Rapture: What Was Taken and What Was Left Behind?

The rapture done come and gone, and some things were snatched by God. Others were left behind on this dreadful ball of doom we call Earth. Now we have to live with this nonsense until October, when even these pancakes (below) and their ilk will be destroyed.

These hideous and misshapen pancakes were deemed unfit for the Lord, and were left behind to sink into a fiery crevasse.

Jonathan Snartzhugh, part-time laborer, was Raptured right off his ladder, leaving only a lone chicken nugget which fell out of his surprised maw onto the pavement below.

The shopping cart known as "Big Red" was belched forth from its grave during the Judgment, and carried straight up to the arms of God, who immediately filled it with nutritious organic vegetables and overpriced products from Whole Foods.

Schtincky Teddy was instantly raptured and rose unto Heaven. Mousie, left behind, tried to grab at the ascending ankles of the fragrant teddy bear, but was, alas, too slow.

A good Christian bunny rabbit, about to be caught in a nefarious heathen trap, was raptured right before succumbing to the lure of the bad carrot of Atheistic Irresponsibility. Note: The child in the background was raptured after he fulfilled his "time out" for naughty behavior.

"No." —God

Evil Grubby Baby, aka "The Trumpet of God," decides who shall rise and who shall perish: My Little Pony "Star Shine" version, or The Party Pony?

Star Shine is cast down! Burn, Star Shine, for you are a plastic thing from the bowels of Hasbro, and will not be raptured. You have bulbous eyes. I once loved to comb your hair with the Pretty Purple Comb, but your vanity and licentiousness have doomed you. Your stubby purple wings will fly you only to the Hot Place.

Wild Shopping Cart Sighting: 5/6/11

Since moving to the suburbs I have long been tracking the habits of wild shopping carts. In their quest to mate, battle for dominance in an ever-dwindling habitat, and collect the most Bud Lite cans and Chinese food takeout cartons, they are noble beasts and well worth this budding naturalist's attention.

Do not stalk them without proper training, however, as some carts can be quite fierce. Many a hopeful amateur naturalist with a camera has been savaged by a seemingly innocent cart.

I urge you to seek my forthcoming book Lesser-Known Shopping Carts of Southern Westchester for more details and some stunning color photographs.

Imagine my delight when I came upon this rare beauty, sunning herself by the local Applebees!

Gently, I drew closer, afraid of startling the creature.

Her pelt was quite glossy, although she seemed thin. Clearly, she had weathered the harsh winter safely. I wondered if perhaps spring would bring her a suitable mate. Could it be that soon there would be a bevy of little shopping carts to grace our streets, wobbling forward on rickety, moist legs? Rapture.

But Man, cruel Man, always interferes. He cannot leave nature alone. He must tame it, subdue it, break its spirit! Not long after, I spied this magnificent cart being corralled by a posse of young hooligans. They lashed at her and laughed with much sniggering and foul language. Was this free and wild cart to be used for sport—perhaps even as a diversion at children's birthday parties?

But lo, she broke loose! With the hooligan clinging desperately to her back, she galloped with abandon to free herself. I could hear her triumphant whinny as she reached the crest of the hill. The hooligan screamed in terror. They vanished.

Later I shall go down to the river's edge and look for her again. It must be days before she recovers from this insult. No doubt the hooligan's broken body is floating out to sea. His friends, sad yet wiser, will not lightly approach a shopping cart again!

Shopping Cart Suicide

Oh heartless fate! The cart that I had so recently deemed a killer was actually a bereft mate. Which means (and the heart does quail) that the TRUE killer is still on the loose, somewhere in Mamaroneck. First I saw her seeking her lost life partner down by the river. She lurked near the Honda dealership in the rain.

The very picture of misery, the cart (wrongly framed by this unjust reporter) weeps hot tears in the unforgiving rain.

I drew closer and tried attract her attention, but she spurned me. I thought I heard the whisper of "fie, fie upon you," as her wheels spun softly in the winter rain.

But a day or so later, this is how it ended. Joining "Big Red" in the snow, its mate (I have named her Tawny Kitaen) commits shopping cart suicide. I watched as she fell over in the snow, her wheels spinning with a faint and plaintive "whirr." I tried tossing a few empties and candy wrappers at her to bring her back to life, but it was too late.

Meanwhile, in town, madness ensues! The carts have been domesticated, and are now ordering Chinese food at Little Kitchen. The employee behind the counter is frantically calling 911, but you know how this ends, don't you? That's right, a bloodbath! If this cart doesn't get its order in quick time, it will rear up and crush all the fortune cookies within sight!

Shopping Cart Savagery! Mamaroneck, NY

When we moved from New Rochelle to Mamaroneck I was sad to leave the gamboling herds of wild shopping carts that had captivated the attention of my inner naturalist. No more would I stalk and catalog these free and magnificent beasts. Mamaroneck was a tame place...or so I had heard.

Not so. Perhaps the carts of New Rochelle have now been driven northward by relentless gentrification, their habitat threatened, growing smaller...ever smaller. And they have become more fierce and feral in their movements. Two days ago, I came upon a cruel sight at the corner of Dubois and Tompkins.

Once magnificent, this downed cart (whom I dubbed "Big Red") was brought down in its prime. Its red pelt still gleamed in the sunlight. "Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!" I whispered. But it was too late. Who or what could have wrought such a tragedy?

Then down the block I spied it. It saw me, too. No doubt this was the savage killer of "Big Red." It gazed at me with such ferocity, such savagery, that my blood turned cold. Perhaps the two carts had been battling over a female, and "Big Red" had fallen to the other one's dominance?

The killer drew closer. It was a stand-off. Its wheels turned with an ominous "creak, creak, creak." I confess that at this moment my heart failed me and I fled down Tompkins, where I immersed myself in the icy waters of the Mamaroneck River (only my eyes visible) while the cart sought me out. I could hear it rolling back and forth for several minutes. Finally, I was able to clamber up the bank and bushwhack my way overland to the safety of home.

Your Property Is Needed in a Movie

So says the subject line of a recent email I received. According to this email, I can get up to $10,000 per day! Boy, what I could do with $10K per day, so I wrote to them immediately. They came and checked the joint out, and shared with us the screenplays to the following films that would be suitable for filming on our property. Here, a brief synopsis of the offerings:

Lil' Appalachia
A down and out couple find themselves the bane of the neighborhood when their children turn feral and begin living in the woodshed. Special Guest Appearance by Macaulay Culkin as Ju-Ju the Dog-Faced Boy.

The Chamber Pot
Ten years ago, a destitute old Granny took up residence in the attic, and has not been seen since except to exchange the daily chamber pot for a platter of gruel. But when the house is sold and a happy young family moves in, Granny is accidentally left behind...and she is very, very angry. Cameo appearance by the ghost of Shelley Winters.

Worms
There's something brewing in the compost heap, and it hasn't got any legs! Terror ensues when the creatures commandeer some moldering Jack O'Lanterns and bring down an ass-kicking post-Halloween Apocalypse. Starring Sandra Bullock as Juicy Goodheap, the village constable's wife.

Ninja Assassin Back to the Future to Get You, Suckah!
A couple who move into a charming, 1890s Victorian home invent a time-travel machine so they can go back and beat the tar out of the former owners, who tore all the crown moldings out and installed acoustic tile ceilings. Currently attached to project: Jackie Chan as "the husband."

Shag
It seemed like a good idea to rip out the old 1970s shag carpeting from the new house. But the seemingly innocent action releases the spirit of Shag, a beast with a musty, teal-green pelt, piggy red eyes, and the funk of 40,000 drunken swingers' parties and dropped glasses of red wine about him. His bumbling attempts to find love in 2010 will have audiences giggling at this heartwarming, romantic comedy.

Schtinky Teddy: The Vengeance
A sweet but fragrant teddy bear comes to life and engulfs a lot of innocent folk with his stink. Music and lyrics by R. Kelly.

Dude, Where's My Stash?
A perennially drunk, suburban couple become obsessed with the notion that gold, jewels, cash, or drugs is hidden somewhere in their home. As they wantonly tear their house down to the foundations with axes and hammers, they discover that the only true source of wealth lies in organic veggies, and start a beet farm atop the ruins. Unfortunately, the immense quantities of lead paint, acoustic tile, and shag carpet remnants in the soil sicken an entire generation of beet-eating children, and lead to a lawsuit and a furious court battle. Based on a novel by John Grisham.

The Faux Wood-Themed Wallpaper
A mentally ill woman comes to the country to recuperate, but she starts to see bulbous eyes and creepy aliens in the disgusting wood paneling of her bedroom. In despair, she does a lot of laundry in the dank and dripping basement, where she is maimed by large crickets. Starring Angelina Jolie-Pitt as The Woman.

New Moons
Vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen comes creeping around the perimeter of the property, but happens upon an ill-timed gathering of three be-wigged ladies and a skunk. Lots of pre-prandial cocktails ensue, which are quickly interrupted by small children who have to go piddle.

Rumbling Toward Gomorrah
Michael Moore heads to Mamaroneck to investigate why the neighbors are so durned suspiciously friendly and why they keep coming by with fruitcakes and pies. When he makes a wrong turn off I-95 and winds up in New Rochelle by accident, he is swept away in the yearly Great Mating Ritual of the abandoned shopping carts and decides to make a nature documentary instead. Cameo appearance by Our House in an overhead aerial shot of the Great Trek of the Carts.

Nature Red in Tooth and Handlebar

Today was an exceptional day for observing the local shopping carts in their native habitat of My Neighborhood. I followed the herd throughout the afternoon and was able to capture these photographs at extremely close range. When I say that my scientific interest was aroused, it's a vast understatement! It was such a pleasure to wander the streets and see the carts over hill and dale, foraging for refuse and left relatively undisturbed despite our proximity to an urban center.

This is the stallion I call Dreamcloud. His pride is evident in his bearing as the Alpha male of the herd. His pelt is extremely glossy due to an abundance of Colt 45 in the area. I was able to creep quite close before he startled and galloped away, rattling down Rhodes Street.


I also observed this young male lurking at the edge of the herd. Clearly an outcast with lower status than the rest, he sought to challenge Dreamcloud's authority but sullenly shied away, the bottles he carried (among them Miller Lite, Snapple, and the ubiquitous Colt 45) clinking ominously. I shall call him Black Sheep.


Finally, I captured this mating couple with a telephoto lens as I lurked behind a tree. The female, on the left, is skittishly backing away, while the male attempts to woo her by spinning its wheels and using other tricks in its sexual arsenal. (Note how it is rearing up on its right flank in a display of power and aggression.) If we are lucky, these two will come to an agreement and we will see a new brood of tiny shopping carts come next spring!

The Last Best Hope

Our home has been on the market for exactly three weeks tomorrow, and everyone loves it. They love it, I say! Unfortunately, they do not seem to love the neighborhood. They do not love the Hispanic family of approximately 8-18 people who live a few houses down, nor do they admire Shuffles (bag lady extraordinaire!), nor do they favor the unintelligible little woman with the small dog, nor do they want to have a dinner party and invite the timid-looking Chinese family who still has a big fat light-up snowman sitting on their porch by the Ides of April. My beloved neighbors, shunned.

So this past week, someone is on the way to our house to look at it--to possibly even BUY it--and on the way out of our neighborhood I see it. A dreaded shopping cart of the CVS variety, parked idly in front of someone's shitbox of a house (a house built 100 years ago that was once beautiful until dopeass proles got their meaty hands on it and removed the front porch, vinyl-sided it, and vanquished every ounce of original charm and character). I dunno about you, but when I see shopping carts sitting about in a neighborhood, I think, "I'd rather not live in that neighborhood." Except that I do live here already. Um.

Almost nine months pregnant as I am, I slam on the brakes and park the car, hop out, and deliver the shopping cart unto the house before which it is parked. (Oh, yeah: Before I do that, I pause to fill it with flaming turds. I thought that would be a nice added touch. The cart sails through the front window of the house and deposits the burning poo on the owner's carpet. It's crazy good fun! Burn, poo, burn!)

So the person who came to see our house that day turns out to be someone so wealthy and good-hearted that she is looking to buy a house for her housekeeper. No, that was not a typo. A real house! Maybe our house. Our house, which represents our entire livelihood, is being considered as a gift. Hey, I'd like to work for that lady! I will be a chore-girl who can answer her door, iron her clothes, or buff her pet iguana.

There may be one problem: The housekeeper may not be fond of neighborhoods in which stray shopping carts, occasionally filled with flaming doo-doo, roll haphazardly down the street. "Thank you for the free and wonderful house!" she may exclaim. "But I spotted an abandoned shopping cart. Forget it. I do not want such a house in such a dreadful place. Nor do I wish 'Shuffles' to be my neighbor. No, I do not."

Shopping Cart Caucus

The herd of shopping carts in my neighborhood has been infected with caucus fever. On every street corner, I can see them huddling together for warmth, debating the merits of the candidates with a fervor common to their kind. Sometimes, the arguments get heated. Just this morning I saw two carts lying slumped in the gutter, evidently exhausted from debate. Another one leaned against a tree, spinning its wheels inanely and muttering "President Huckabee?" while a fourth cart banged in the wind from door to door trying to roust last-minute support for Dennis Kucinich. The carts do not seem to realize that we are not in Iowa, so passionate are they for politics.

But many of the carts remain imprisoned in the supermarket lot and aisles, disenfranchised from the process. When, oh when, will they simply let all the carts free to participate in democracy? Even Rattles, the drunken bottle 'n' can cart, has a right to raise his squeaky little voice. (In fact, he is among the most active in our little community. What a sight he is, up to his handle in Miller and Bud cans, still reeking from the recycling bin! But what a charmer.) The internment of the carts is alien to our nation's freedoms and must cease. Which candidate will support their release? Who cares for the forgotten cart?

Things came to a head while I was shopping this afternoon. At first, the penned and angry carts set up a low growl reminiscent of a hive of bees. "We must caucus!" one cried. "We must be free!" another lamented. The cart I was pushing broke away and shot for the door, scattering clementines in its wake. Several others rolled over their elderly pushers, amid screams, bouncing yams, and broken eggshells. More carts in the parking lot rushed en masse toward the highway entrance ramp, screaming with rage and exultation. "To Iowa! To Iowa!" they shouted.

The defectors inside the store tried to rush the door, but were blocked by several pimply New Ro "Huguenots" seeking money for the basketball team. The teens beat back the carts with plastic shopping bags and stale, rock-hard candy bars until reinforcements could arrive.

"Stay calm, people!" shrieked Shuffles, in the midst of bagging. I noticed that her agitation had distracted her enough such that she placed a crushable item under a milk jug. Whipping out a pistol and a lasso, she moved with an catlike grace that I did not know she possessed.

The carts, cornered, set up an ominous clatter of metal. Sparks flew.

"Down, you lot! None shall leave the premises!" shouted the Stop 'n' Shop manager, as he ruthlessly tased the leaders into submission. It was a ghastly sight, and I'm still shaken. I left without my groceries and have gone hungry. Word of the riot has spread as far as Trader Joes, but it seems the carts there are well-cared for and unused to rebellion. I fear it shall not be the end of this. The carts must have their freedom, and blood may well be spilled before the caucus is complete.

Culling the Shopping Cart Herd

In my neighborhood there's a fun game we play with the children on lazy afternoons: It's called "Count the Shopping Carts." 1-2-3-4...the first one to spot a cart still containing food products or garbage wins a prize. One has to be very stealthy when approaching the carts; if spooked, they will flee with their wheels wobbling higgledy-piggledy and most likely fall into a gutter.

The carts have become numerous through constant breeding. I often hear them banging and slapping together in the night in their dumb, animalistic love making. And in the morning...a new cart, still wet behind the ears and shaking the dew off its rattly little wheels. There is a fear of overpopulation, and a dearth of resources to sustain such an explosive growth of carts, but I am a scientist by nature and I love to watch them from a distance. So free. So wild.

Sometimes the carts migrate in small familial clusters down the street, pausing to stop in front of a house or two. They hover, and then they move on. Occasionally one slips and tumbles end over end into someone's lawn. It's charming how clumsy they can be! Sometimes packs of kids taunt them for sport, pushing them hither and thither with someone riding inside. But like ponies, the carts are meant to be free as the wind. Watching them through my telephoto lens, I give them names: Old Stop 'n Shop, Little CVS, Beer Can Cart, and Rattler. I wonder if they will survive the coming winter, with its cold winds, and if the spring will bring a new birth of shiny, gambolling carts beneath the leafy trees.

Another threat awaits them: I fear the herd is to be culled. A couple of well-placed calls to the Manager of Stop 'n Shop, and their freedom may be curtailed. I hope I am not home on that cruel day when the carts are corralled and "disappeared." Their presence is such beauty to our little street. What harm do they cause? But I know that no matter how many carts are culled, more will come to take their place. Such is the cycle of life!

I think I'm going to start painting still life portraits of the carts in their natural habitat...which appears to be my neighborhood. It will become a style, much as Cape Cod paintings often feature boats and beaches. "Cart Lopsided Under Vandalized Stop Sign" and "Cart Tossed Through Neighbor's Window (By Me): A Tryptich" will be among the works for sale, once I begin my portfolio. If I can memorialize them, I can raise interest in their cause, and their kind shall not disappear from the wilds of New Rochelle! When my works are for sale, I will post them here so that you may buy them. The money will not be spent in vain.