Preface

It started with one shopping cart being discarded by one very busy man, wearing a burgundy beret.  He left it in the middle of a parking space and ran off to his car.  The next lady, seeing the cart in the space, added hers to it and scurried away. Still another gentleman, rational-izing in his own mind that it was the “new place to put carts,” stacked his on to the other two—a train of three. This last man happened to jiggle the arrangement to the extent that the trio of carts wobbled onto the parking lot into a lane of traffic.  A man driving by, nearly hitting the moving three, got out of his car and, in a fit of anger, shoved them to the side. They careened and collided into the side of a car, where a woman was placing her crying child at that moment. This surprise jolt caused the young one to wail louder.  The mother screamed at her son, slapped him, pushed the carts away, checked for damage and got into her car and jerked away, barely missing a teenager on a bike, who gave her the finger.

Meanwhile the carts were rolling, stopped for a moment by another man who inserted his own into the collage and strolled away. Then a fifth woman attached her cart to the collection, but her dress got caught.  She yanked to free herself and as she whirled, the five grocery buggies went speeding toward the street.  She thought about chasing them, but her dress was torn and she was late.

The carts gained momentum down an incline and rolled onto the main street into traffic in front of a transit bus that swerved to miss them, striking the car in the opposite lane. It was a direct hit, and the man inside was not wearing a seat belt, just a burgundy beret.  He was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Do unto others . . . it all does make a difference.