## 02 Tale of the cart

*It's the tale of a shopping cart in one of those supermarket in the suburbs of France…*

I'm a cart as everycart, made of metal and plastic, with four wheels, a handle. I live in a parking, just in front of a supermarket. I've no home like you, humans. Just some shelters to protect us from rain and snow. Not very useful for the hot days of summer, when my handle is burning, almost melting. And I wear a lock system to put coins or token, as some humans are using us to play, destroy us or whatever they have in their sick brain. It's not a prison because we often change of shelter and we are rolling through the aisles of the supermarket, sometimes with a human child inside, most often with your shopping goods, groceries, and your bags, clothes. I'm not complaining about myself. I'm a happy cart, in a beautiful and calm suburb. I hope living many years like this, before going to retirement. 

Retirement for us is not far, alas ! Five years is an achievement. Nobody to repair us if a wheel is broken. I don't know where my friends have gone now. There's no graveyard for us. Sometimes, you can see one of us in an unauthorized dump. But life of a cart is not made of fun. We are stacked in three of four lines inside our shelter. If you are the first in the row, you're not going to go anywhere for the day. Just feeling the shock of a new cart in your row. You are so butal with us. And I'm not talking of the children making races with us or doing like bumper cars in a funfair. No, just the grand mother trying awkwardly to put us away, to get us in line. Blang, Clong, Bang ! Another injury for one of us, maybe two. And what to say when I'm the last one in the line, alone, waiting for my turn to roll, run in the alleys. You're looking at me as a plague, as if I had some virus or I don't know. You chose the others in the big rows full of us, not the one alone. And to let us, you don't use the same shelter,
 of course, but the one next to your car, often more in the wind and the rain, not with this beautiful tree I like to talk to.

I love my life of shopping cart. I love discovering the supermarket each day as a new one, seeing new people, new products. I enjoy talking with the friends during my "trip" in the aisles. You may not imagine that when you use one of us but sometimes we are talking about you, your attitude, your behavior, the products you buy. No need of a scanner to know that. If the managers and the marketing service knew it… Sometimes, I'm blocking one wheel on purpose to make you change your path. It makes me laugh. When I say laugh, of course, it's not in the human way but don't think we have no emotions as a cart or a trolley. For example, when an employee is moving us at the end of the day to dispatch us on the shelters, we are stressed because some of us may be discarded. And not to be repaired. 

I'm now 3 years old, a good age for a shopping cart. I'd like to travel a lot, see another parking or maybe to stay inside the mall. I know that in some of your shops, there are smaller shopping cart exclusively inside. Alas, I'm too big for that. And I see you using the automatic cash register, using smaller carts and trolleys. You can't imagine the goal of these : To make employees disapear and us to. I feel like a dinosaur with all the digital shopping and the deliveries. We can't do a protest demonstration. Can you imagine us between République and Nation in Paris ? I dream to see Paris, the Grand Boulevards. I just saw Paris in pictures on the newspapers in the bookstore. But the only cart in the street of Paris are often to help homeless to carry their belongings. Homeless cart with homeless humans. Of course, I'm just an object, not an organism with life, a heart. But when we see what you are doing to other life forms, we understand very well your behavior with us, another ephemeral disposable thing.


Oh, wait, someone wants to use me. I'll come back after a while. I will tell you who she is, if you want...

2Dɛ

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