This is it.  Today is the last shopping day before Christmas.   We know tomorrow is only Christmas Eve but you can hardly count that as a shopping day.  Christmas Eve we’re going to relax.  Even if it kills us.  And don’t forget, Christmas Eve is a Saturday this year so every clueless male in America, maybe in the world, (as opposed to almost every clueless male) will be at the mall still unsure of what to get for his wife, mother, girlfriend, daughter, secretary, AA, paramour, clerk, grandmother, personal assistant, or Aunt Whatshername in Mineola. 

However you want to count, there are only two days until Christmas.  And each is going to be filled with people filling sidewalks, and stores, and restaurants, and bars.  Probably especially bars the later it gets but that’s a different post.

All those people out there and sometimes it seems not a single one of them schooled in the pedestrian law of walking in public.  Even He of We sometimes gets a little distracted when allowed to push the shopping cart and wanders down a different aisle than She of We.  But what we’re talking about here is different.  Many people are distracted in stores but add the glitz and the shimmer of the holiday decorations and even those never distracted lose focus.  And the extra traffic isn’t helping.  We think part of the problem is that nobody ever puts that cell phone away.  It wouldn’t be so bad if people were talking on the phone while trying to wind their way through the cosmetics counters at the department store.  No, they are texting while trying to wind their way through that maze.  Add three shopping bags, two trailing children, and a clerk spraying fragrance samples on passersby and oncoming traffic doesn’t stand a chance.  But we digress.

As long as we brought it up, what it is with people and their shopping carts.  First of all, a shopping cart is not a suitable substitute for a wheeled walker, particularly if you don’t use one with which to walk under normal circumstances.  Both of We have informed our children that if any of them sees either of us hunched over a shopping cart, arms resting on the handle about the elbows, propelling it forward at a pace a that would cause a snail to die of boredom, we are to be shot and/or sent directly to the nursing home at the bottom of their lists.  If you are one of those please leave our blog now and nobody will get hurt. 

A shopping carts are proliferating.  Once found only in supermarkets these little wheeled obstructions are now in almost every store across the globe.  Clearly someone is making a killing in the shopping cart market.  Hopefully whoever that someone is has gotten a killer Christmas bonus this year.  But given that shopping carts are flourishing so, we’d think people would be able to drive them better.  We find carts left at the end of aisles, in the middle of aisles, with children left to guard the last of the boxed fruitcake, blocking the animated Christmas hats (sorry, we’ll probably not get to that topic this year but we have it on our list for next year’s holiday posts), and left in the line to the checkout counter with a note that the driver has made a quick trip to housewares and will return at 1:30.  Those actually pushing carts often have their eyes either glued to the top shelf as they pass by at warp speed or on their latest text.

Once shopping is done at Store #1 it is traditional to leave their cart in their custody.  Clearly we must be unaware of some “winter rules” that allow people to keep that cart for their entire shopping day.  He or We was out just yesterday in a local mall and he noticed someone pushing a cart from a store in the shopping center two miles away.  Curious, most curious.   

Eventually even those people will finish up for the day and head to the car with their holiday haul.  Our advice to everybody who ever pushed a shopping cart through a parking lot is to please remember that most cars are bigger and heavier than your shopping cart.  One should not consider playing chicken with a family of four in a minivan loaded with Christmas presents on Christmas Eve Eve.  Not a good idea.  Our second piece of advice is once you empty your packages into your vehicle, please return you cart all the way to the cart corral.  Parking is already at a premium this time of year (we know, we already did that post).  Don’t make it worse by just leaving your cart in the spot that used to be your car.  Walk the extra 50 paces there and back and put it where it belongs.

As long as we’re walking out in the parking lot please watch where you are going.  Every mall and shopping center, every mega-mart and restaurant now have those striped lines from parking land to sidewalk land urging drivers to stop for walkers but not saying anything to the walkers.  It’s true every state now has a law that drivers must yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk.  That’s in a crosswalk, not approaching a crosswalk, close to the crosswalk, or anywhere in the same parking lot as a crosswalk.  It’s still a good idea to look both ways before crossing.  We understand looking both ways may mean not finishing the text but the life you save may be your own.  Make it worth the effort.

Two more days, each an adventure in negotiating through the aisles of the Christmas sale remnants, fighting your way to the checkout counter, and dragging it all across the parking lot to your car, if you can find it on the first try.  

We suggest you relax on Christmas Eve.  Even if it kills you.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?