Dear People that Abuse the Rascal Scooter

This is not a letter about people with disabilities that need Rascal scooters or other conveyances to get around.  I am not the kind of person to have beef with someone for something they cannot control.  This is about people that are lazy, and have gotten so overweight that they use scooters as a robot slave to carry their terrible bulk around.  Yes, I am aware that some fat people that ride rascal scooters are overweight for the same reason they need the scooter, because they cannot move around or exercise.  There is a difference, as you will see.

An emerging trend seems to be the horrible experiences I have when I go to stores.  For the most part, an exception to this is when I go to the supermarket.  As a (mostly) reformed fatty, I still love food, and like going shopping for it.  Looking at it tends to be healthier than eating it, at least.

On my last day off, I had to go to the store to pick up some thing to make pickles.  I will only go to one store, because I know where to find everything in it, therefore, I don't have to spend too much time walking around.  Armed with this plan, I got in, went straight to the aisles I needed, and got what I wanted, all in record time.  Perhaps I was feeling cocky, but I decided I could take the extra time to go to the back end of the store and treat myself to a quart of Turkey Hill iced tea.  To get to that cooler, I had to pass by the snack food/ soda aisle.  This would not be a problem on a normal day, but today was no normal day.  Both Pepsi and Coke products were on a very good sale, and the store had set up a large display in the back aisle.  The display was so large, in fact, that it effectively formed a choke point where only one cart could get by at a time, thus making this a very well thought out strategy for the store to create chaos and anarchy.  Add to this a sale on Oreos just one aisle down, and the conditions were right for the sugar storm of the century.

I waited my turn to get through the choke point, and ran over to get my tea. In the thirty seconds it took me to do this, a woman roughly the size of a Kodiak bear rode her Rascal scooter and parked it directly in the choke point, and started poking boxes of soda with the handy grabber she stored in the basket of the scooter.  Nothing particularly says "My cankles will never support my weight" like a person on a scooter with a grabber in the basket.  Before you think me crass, gentle readers, and think that perhaps this lady was one of those that was overweight because they were confined to the scooter, and not vice versa, let me tell you what I saw in her basket.  There were four kinds of cookies that I could immediately see, as well as an Entemann's coffee cake, three boxes of pasta, and the coup de grace, a box of brown sugar.  If diabetes were an actual person, even it would not eat all of this.  I had time to look at all of this, because there were about six people waiting for her to move so the aisle would clear.  Instead, she tried to knock a 12 pack of soda into the basket, even though it would crush the carbohydrate circus she had going on in there.  She instead knocked it to the floor, then looked around and demanded, "Is someone going to get that for me?"  The next thing I remember was being in my car and driving home, so I was either molested and blacked out, or my body shut down to avoid a meltdown.

Later that evening, I was making dinner and realized I had neglected to pick up a key ingredient for the meal.  This meant that I had to go back to the lion's den.  I rushed into the store, kept my head down, and rushed through to get what I needed.  I avoided the area of the chokepoint, and was at the checkout counter in under three minutes.  In line ahead of me was a man in on the the store's generic scooters.  He was older, and had a walker folded up in front of him.  When I walked up, he was struggled to get out of the seat and stand so that he swipe his credit card.  He cheerfully refused help from the clerk, and took his bags himself to put in the basket.  Seeing that he not causing a scene, I didn't immediately think anything of it.  I payed for my things, and walked to the parking lot to find that gentleman slowly trying to get his walker out to start loading his car.  I put my things away, and walked over to him, offering to help.  He looked at me, twice his size, looked at the milk and bags he had, and told me, "Son, I could put these things away and still have enough in me to whoop you good, but you seem like a good guy, so I don't want to have to show you that.  I don't need help with this junk, but I would appreciate it if you'd take the scooter back.  That's a long walk back to the car."

Thus, it ended up that I was riding the scooter back to the store, because why not?   I got dirty looks from every person leaving the store, because I had no business riding in that scooter, just like the Sultan of Sucrose from earlier.  She was riding because it was easier than walking, or because she just didn't care anymore.  I was doing a good deed, but I got back what I gave.  I also spent 50 minutes on the elliptical that day, which was probably 49 more minutes of exercise than that woman had attempted to do that week.