Losing my Cart and Brain Cells at Target

"Ma'am! Ma'am! That's my cart!" A distraught Target customer said to me the other day.

She was right. I was walking away with her cart--with two tops I had picked out and HER PURSE!

Now obviously this was an honest mistake. But was it a logical one?

See, I had done some serious grocery shopping prior to my clothes shopping. My cart was piled high with frozen pancakes and whatnot. So why, when I found two cute Target tops, would I toss them into the first empty cart I saw? And then WALK OFF WITH IT?

As it turns out, my own cart was way down by the juniors section--pancakes defrosting.

While that was my worst cart-stealing offense, it wasn't my first. On that very same shopping trip, I almost stole another cart. I went to put my Starbucks in the kid-seat (cause I was kid-free!) and only after setting down my Pumpkin Spice Latte did I notice some concealer and thought, "Hmmm, I don't remember buying any of that…although I DO need some of that. Damn you, Target, always making me go off-list!"

About a week after the cart-stealing incidents, I went back to the scene of the crime. While shopping (with Gus this time), I saw a friend and shared the story of my prior cart mishaps. She gasped; we laughed. We discussed how I could be in such a fog at Target when I didn't have my kids with me. Maybe I was so elated to be there alone, we surmised?

So then Gus and I went out to the car and found this:

It had been open the whole time we were in Target! I was embarrassed to even approach it. An employee came up and told me they were about to make an announcement. So glad I got out  there before that happened. How would that go? "Attention Target Customers, would the biggest idiot in the store please report to the parking lot? Like if you just stole someone's cart by mistake, you might be who we are looking for." 

Of course none of these incidents will prevent me from shopping at my favorite store. But if they kick me out..nah, they would never do that. They would have to close down the store!