You know how sometimes you are in a major hurry and you are trying to get things done and you don’t notice some of the things going on around you because you are too focussed on the things you are trying to get done?   Or does this only happen to me?  

Last night I had Alex with me as I ran a few errands.  It was getting close to 8:00pm, and I only had about ten minutes to do what I had to do, so to say I was in a hurry is a major understatement.  The last errand of the night was a quick stop at the grocery store to get some milk and bread and a few other items.

As I hurried into the grocery store, I said to Alex, “Quick – grab a cart and follow me.”  So then I hurried down the first aisle not looking back, pulling this and that off the shelf and handing them off to the side or behind me for Alex to grab and put into the cart that he was pushing.  I was so hurried and so distracted that I hardly glanced at him, and would quickly go on to my next stop, grab another item, hand it to him, and it continued this way for about two minutes or so.  Finally we got to the milk aisle and I could hear Alex following close behind with the cart, like he had been the entire time.  I stopped at the milk section, opened up the glass doors and pulled out two big cartons, and because they were too heavy to just hand back to him, I turned to put them into the cart myself.  Only then did I notice that my funny-guy Alex was pushing one of those kiddie karts, and all my groceries were just about overflowing out of it.

I was laughing so hard!  To think he had been following me around the store the whole time with that thing, and I never even noticed!    He just looked so silly, I couldn’t stop laughing.   You normally see two  and three year olds pushing those kiddie carts, not preteens!  Alex had to hunch over to push it.  Finally, when I could breathe again, I said, “Alex!  Why did you grab that thing?!!!” and he said, “I don’t know!  I thought it would be funny!”    We were both laughing so hard and giggling about this until it was time to check out, and even in the line I couldn’t stop laughing.