Things I Hate: Cart People

Calgary, Alberta is known around the world for three reasons. We have oil, the Calgary Stampede and some of the craziest motherfuckers to ever load up their life into a shopping cart and go merrily screaming off into the sunset. That last part isn’t entirely true, the cheap abundance of crack is more widely known than the crazies roaming our streets, however it would be easy to lump crack and crazies together in a twisted chicken and egg argument.

Let me state that this is not a rip on the entire homeless community. I’m fairly certain there are some nice people out there that have fallen on hard times and for one reason or another are not able to keep a roof over their heads. These are not the girlfriend-less drummers and liberal arts majors of the world I’m tearing a strip off of. These are the individuals that shun jobs, bills and clean underwear for the simplicity of a rusty metal cart.

Cart People are the roosters of the urban blight. Roosters, or cocks if you will, mark the beginning of the day by crowing to the rising sun. Cart People, or cocks if you will again, commemorate each morning by pushing their rickety shopping carts down my fucking alley, heaped to the brim with the loudest and most useless shit known to the human race.

Cart People will never have anything of real value in their carts. It appears that anything that goes into the cart is simply used to make the cart louder. Single ski boots, ironing boards and textbooks for obsolete computer programming languages are commonly found in the possessions of a Cart Person. They also have an attraction to anything shiny and are thus driven to pick up the bottles and cans that are a cornerstone of bum currency.

Speaking on the topic of bottles and cans, Cart People have secret access to some of the most amazing trash bag technology known to man. If you’ve ever seen a veteran Cart Person you totally know what the fuck I’m taking about. One single Cart Person is able to neatly pack the equivalent of an epic week long Bukowski/Hemingway bender into four steel-belted bags and lash them to their carts with skill that would make the following truck driver jealous.

Totally fucking jealous.

It takes mad ninja skills for me to take my garbage from the can to the chute, and god help me if I put so much as a plastic fork in the trash. When I see a single prong poke through the thin plastic I turn into a crazed bomb technician who’s just cut the wrong wire.

“Fucking run! It’s gonna blow!”

The clickety-fucking-clack of a Cart Person three blocks away is not unlike the call of the ice cream man. Upon first hearing a Cart Person the lazy and empathetic among us know that have about a half hour to gather up their empties and place them by the nearest dumpsters for pick up. I however am far lazier than I am empathetic and prefer to deliver my empty whisky bottles to Cart People via aerial assault from my tenth floor balcony. (edit: those closest to me have advised me that hurling bottles at the homeless may not be entirely helpful)

While Cart People are very guilty of auditory rape they are mostly harmless. They lack the personal touch of the drunk bums you meet on the train at five in the morning. The ones with the half closed eyes, inability to speak in real words, zero balance and breath fumes that are a combination paint thinner and ass. These charming individuals don’t seem to understand ‘ignore’ and seem to mistake my enormous headphones and face buried in some form of reading material as willingness to engage in incoherent babble. No mister creepy-smelly guy on the train, I would not like to give you my money. You are the bane of my commute and I hate you.

I also hate the bums that stand in front of convenience stores and coffee shops and believe opening the door with all the pep of a geriatric quadriplegic entitles them to whatever change I may have when I leave the store. I have a message to all the freelance door-openers of the world. Fuck right off. I do not need a professional entrance and egress coordinator and if I were to hire one they wouldn’t look the embodiment of the word ‘alleyrapist’

To summarize I have a strong dislike for pretty much all of the terrifying weirdos that roam the city streets with impunity. They make everyday just a little more infuriating and a lot more disturbing. If I ever end up homeless I may end up drinking mouthwash and fighting with street signs, and I may end up screaming at you and your children while not wearing pants, but I vow hear and now that I will never become a Cart Person, and if you ever see me strolling down your back alley with a shopping cart at six in the morning please feel free to hurl an empty whisky bottle at the back of my head. Please.

The Misanthrope