DVD Players in Shopping Carts for Kids!?

Have you seen them? They are all the buzz of suburban moms in Atlanta. Those enormous, giant, brightly colored, very loud, very hard to push shopping carts that have a DVD player built in. Oh yes! The kids ride below and are almost enclosed inside a bubble of loud Barney mayhem.

I had heard of them and even made my husband do a drive by of a Publix on our way home from a restaurant because I could see them inside. I just had never "experienced" one of them until the other day.

I needed to go to Publix instead of my ordinary grocery store. One of my friends told me Lean Cuisine dinners were on sale at 50% off. A deal too good to pass up even though it meant I'd have to bring the kids with me. A fate normally worse than death.

As soon as we walked into the store, the carts were there right in front of us. It was like the sky had opened up and a beam of light shown down on them. I think angels were singing somewhere amidst the chaos. Before I could even think about it, or try to think of a reason to persuade my kids the bright signing carts weren't any fun, they were buckled inside the "Barney" cart pushing all the buttons. What could I do but hang my head in defeat and dig out a dollar to put into the machine which would unlock the cart.

Once in the store, I immediately felt horribly stupid trying to push a very awkward, very purple, very loud cart with two crazy, excited kids inside. All this for some frozen boxed dinners?

I decided I might as well enjoy the peace. I must say, one good thing was the fact that I could barely see or hear my kids. From the front I could see them but that required me to walk around and bend down to ask what was wrong. While I was trying to push, I could see their lips moving through the bubble but couldn't make out what they were saying. For the most part, the kids were content.

You should have seen the stares I was getting trying to turn that monstrosity around the corners. It didn't help to have the Barney Song playing extremely loud. I definitely saw looks of pity from some businessmen trying to buy lunch from the deli.

Finally, I picked out the last of my groceries and went to the counter. Now the kicker is that you can't take these special carts outside. So while I was trying to pay, I had to remove my screaming 2 year old from the large cart and put him in a very boring old buggy. It was chaos. I almost left without my groceries I was so confused. Three people were coming at me with carts and taking the Barney cart away while I was prying my son's hands from it. At this point, I would gladly have paid 3 times as much for a Lean Cuisine to not be in this situation.

An unhappy, screaming child in an old boring buggy, or the enormous, awkward Barney cart... which is the lesser of two evils? I'm still not decided on that one!