There Aren't Enough Shopping Carts

As I sit here at my desk at work on a daily basis I have a view to the outside world through my window. I’ve sat here since 2008 and just the changes to my little section of the world have been significant. But nothing has changed more than the people that walk by.

We are not too far from a high school, so I see lots of students walking to and from school. Sometimes a cross country running team will run by, I see school buses. We’re in a business district so I see people walking to and from work or walking by to pick up something from the local restaurants for lunch.

Across the street there are apartments and homes and a retirement village, so I see people of all ages out walking their dogs or doing yard work, just carrying on with their normal day to day routine.

In the past couple of years one thing that I have noticed more and more of, that I never saw before, are homeless people with shopping carts filled with all their worldly treasures and items like cans and bottles that they can recycle for a little bit of money here and there. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a mate, very often with a dog.

Today as I looked across the street I saw a tall, thin, young man walking slowly, pushing a shopping cart busting at the seams with “stuff”.  My mind instantly went to the thought that I constantly have about how lucky I am to have my job, my family, my family’s support, a roof over my head and the heads of my children and how that could just as easily be me.

It could be me. Like everyone else I’m just a few paychecks away from poverty. What would I do if I lost my job and I used up my savings? Would I have to be homeless? Would I have to get a shopping cart and what would be most important to me to fill my shopping cart with? 

That led me to think about everyone else and the Apocalypse and how that poor man is already living the Apocalypse. What will we do when we all have to start living like that? Where will we each find a shopping cart? There’s a huge Vons Grocery Store right across the street and around the corner, but there are barely enough shopping carts for all of us employed in this building alone. If we all took one where would the other people get theirs?

Now my mind is really racing. People…there are not enough shopping carts in the world! If things don’t get better and we are all out on the street…there aren’t enough shopping carts, what will we do?

I’m normally a positive thinking person, but every once in a while things like this hit me hard and scare the crap out of me. Don’t they scare you? How sad that I have come to this point in my life where I am actually concerned that I will have a shopping cart when and if I am homeless.