Shopping Cart Series: Smell Ya Later

I was so young when they took me away from my first home. It was so long ago, I can’t even remember where I came from.

All of the identifying markers on my metal frame have been erased and worn off by hard labor, and the only thing left is a carved out W birthmark. My friends, Rubbermaid Mop Bucket & Wringer (nicknamed 31-quart), Mrs. Mop, Mobile Trashy, and PushBroom all say that the W means I once was a part of the Waldbaum’s family. I think that’s just the manufacturer’s branding.

This is not such a bad life, really. Mainly, because my friends are there for me. Sometimes they don’t really get me, though — because I was kidnapped and they were purchased specifically by the parks department. In a way, I feel like I don’t belong, but I try not to dwell on it for too long.

Life is rough out here in Dyker Beach Park, but it’s not so bad in the summer when Marty Golden works on getting elected again with  these free concerts. Maybe the crowd might be better if they had to pay a couple dollars for entry. I should just be glad I’m not at Asser Levy — or even worse, wandering the streets alone in Sheepshead Bay. Rumor has it, that over there shopping carts are kidnapped from their homes, tied up to trees,  locked up behind bars, then just abandoned.

The other shopping cart here at Dyker — a real loner that guy is — told me, in a rare talkative moment, that he had put up such a ruckus when he was at Wingate Field that  they had to move him over to Prospect Park. The music they played there made him wild, so they brought him to Asser Levy where the summer concert crowd tamed him into submission.  He’s just a shell of a cart now and wouldn’t even allow himself to be photographed for the series.

Not me. I’m jumping at the opportunity to be featured here in the slight chance that maybe, just maybe, someone out there will recognize me after all these years — and I’ll be rolled outta here.  Being stationed at this park, meant there was always a toilet nearby. But after all these years I need to say “smell ya later!” to my life, here. I will be sad, though, to say goodbye to my lifelong chums. Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to steel myself up.

So, if anyone out there thinks they know my  loved ones, please let them know where I’m at.