#79 Cart-man

America is becoming cart-ified. Everywhere I turn these days, people are wheeling stuff around. Backpacks everywhere are morphing into extendible-handled caster-bottomed carts. The message seems to be, if you can’t wheel it you shouldn’t own it. I saw this guy downtown. Had a laptop-holder computer sack. It was a cart Had wheels, had a handle. Another guy came up to his table in the wireless node coffee shop. He had a cart too. His was bigger. More black nylon more zippers. Bigger laptop. Methinks a little competition was going on. The first guy did have a smaller monitor screen. Maybe he was suffering from screen-us envy.
I’m a little worried though. The other day I was looking a picture of a World War II GI about to embark for France. He had a small wool blanket for a bedroll and a trenching tool for latrine digging in a special pouch on his back, and one of those big green canvas duffel bags with everything else slung over one shoulder. For you young folk the duffel bag was about 10 to 12 inches in diameter and 3 to 4 feet long. Basically it was a giant stuff sack. And that’s what you did. Stuffed your stuff in. That was then this is now, where, let’s face it, we don’t live in a country where such everyday exercise is a common thing. I was briefly heartened in the 80s and 90s when schools everywhere curtailed their locker availability because of vandalism and drug smuggling and stuff and forced the kids to lug around all their books in knapsacks. Okay backpacks. When my kid complained, I said, hey, a little backpacking is good exercise indeed. But my hope was quashed as the backpack backlash set in, when some kids complained of lower back pain and their parents rushed to sue the schools for chiropractic and percodan bills.
So now all the backpacks have handles and wheels. And instead of a fit country on its toes, we have a country that fit for nothing but to tow. Tow it to school, tow it to the store. Make sure you buy the casters that don’t mark the floors. You’ll still get back pain, but it’ll be that twisty sharp back pain from trying to yank your pseudocart through a tight spot between parked cars. But at least we don’t even have to lift the damn things as high as the curb. Cause luckily, the city sidewalks all have those ramps at street intersections now that were put in for the handicapped. They make it real easy to roll a cart over. And hell, I guess being terminally lazy is a handicap of sorts.
I was at the health club the other day. And yep, one of the people coming into the health club had a brand spanking new workout bag. It was like the one I keep my racquet in and workout clothes and balls and suchlike—and sling over my shoulder. Not so this health club member. Hers had a handle. And wheels. She had rolled it all the way in from her car. Which need I say, she had parked as close as possible to the entrance. She warmly greeted her personal trainer. He looked down at her bag, assessed her sag, and I swear I heard the sound effect in his mind going: ka-ching. This cart thing will keep him rolling—in the dough.
America, ya gotta love it.