'I have to buy a new wheelie bin,' I told the Prof. 'The trash pandas destroyed our old one.'

'Are trash pandas human?' asked the Prof.

'The debate is ongoing,' I replied. 'Trash pandas' is US slang for 'raccoons'. Their little hands enable them to engage in an ongoing war of wits with homo sapiens. The raccoons are winning. First, the wheelie bin lost a wheel. Then the raccoons discovered the hole left by the missing wheel. Now the bin is history and I have a problem.

Looked up 'wheelie bin' on Amazon. They had some deluxe ones for $183. I do not want to pay more for a wheelie bin than the price of two weeks' worth of groceries, so I did not order one of these superior objects. I checked Tractor Supply, which is close by and offers everything from actual machinery to cowboy hats and live chicks. Tractor Supply's offerings were also in the $180-$240 range. Nein, danke. We do not require a wheelie bin that can double as a tank in case of urban warfare.

Walmart had a cheap one advertised at $29.95. More like it, I thought. If the trash pandas were going to trash the vehicle, it had better be affordable to replace it. So off we went. It was a beautiful morning, cool weather, bright sun, fluffy clouds. The seniors were out in force, so we blended in nicely at what my brother-in-law calls 'Wally World'.

After ascertaining that the garden section was not where you buy wheelie bins, I directed our cart through the hardware-odds-and-ends part, picking up necessary items on the way: cough drops, shampoo, a pack of coat hangers. A friendly-looking man in a company vest was stacking items up ahead. Like me, he was older and had a limp.

'I'll ask. . . ' began Elektra. I stopped her.

'No. Let me. You'll ask for a wheelie bin. And we'll never get one.'

'But we want a wheelie bin.'

'Yes, but you can't call it that. Nobody here knows the words 'wheelie bin.' That's not American.'

'But the online stores said 'wheelie bins'.'

'That doesn't matter. Nobody here has heard the expression 'wheelie bin' before. And you know what happens when you use those foreign words for things. Remember the Duvet Incident.'

She thought. 'When everybody got mad because we called it a 'duvet', even though there's no other word for a big, overstuffed pillow thing that you put on the bed instead of a quilt? And in spite of the fact that they sell them everywhere? They should have been glad you didn't ask for a Bettbezug.'

I nodded. 'Which is why we bought a 'bed-inna-bag'. So let me do this.'

'Excuse me, sir: we're looking for one of those big plastic garbage cans with wheels?'

The store worker beamed. 'Let me take you to them.' And he walked us all the way to the correct aisle. Lovely person.

Wheelie-bin-that-is-not-a-wheelie-bin acquired, we grabbed some groceries, checked out while exchanging weather-related pleasantries with the checkout lady, and headed back out into the sunlight (it really was a nice day!) and into the parking lot. A driver stopped to let us cross the delivery area in front of the exit doors. I pushed the shopping cart up the hill to our parking spot, while Elektra dragged the empty bin behind her. It coasted nicely on its shiny new wheels.

A gentleman with a sporty white moustache and a twinkle in his china-blue eyes stopped dead as he passed us.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

Each of us detected the tell-tale twitch at the corner of the mouth. I waited for it.

'She's bought her own cart, hasn't she?' he commented.

'Yep,' I replied.

All three of us laughed and went on our way.

There are a googolplex of stories on Earth, the mostly-harmless planet. This has been one of them. And if you get that reference, you are old enough to go shopping in a rural Walmart on a sunny Monday morning.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

22.07.24 Front Page

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