As some of you may know, I have been on crutches for about a month due to a stress fracture in my right foot. I’ve been sentenced to another two weeks of crutched life, but this time I have to be religious about it. No longer am I allowed to cast them aside to navigate the toddler toy minefield that is my tiny duplex, or to drop off the tiniest thing at a client’s house (unless it can ride undamaged inside a backpack), and gawd forbid I try to measure much of anything myself. I seriously shouldn’t complain though, since it is a stress fracture causing this grief and not a tumor…which is what the doctor originally thought my problem was. (Thankfully, he kept this little nugget of information to himself until he got the results of my MRI and saw I was in the clear.)

Doing much of anything while perched on crutches is hard enough, but shopping in particular can be exhausting. And taking on some place like Ikea on crutches? I knew I would give up about a third of the way through the maze unless I bucked up and drove one of those embarrassing scooter carts.

Yes.

Yes, folks, today I did drive the scooter cart through Ikea. You know I didn’t drive a bazillion miles out to BFE Round Rock to have the yellow shirts carry my lifeless body out on a hand truck. Much like renting a motorcycle in Bermuda though, driving a scooter shopping cart takes a bit of a warmup and even after I got the hang of it, I was “realigning” pallets of merchandise right and left. Obviously, I tried to be extra careful around the breakables…

But let me tell you, despite my initial embarrassment and the Saturday crowds and tight aisles that left about 45% of the merchandise inaccessible to me, I had FUH-UN (2 syllables) driving that electric cart through the store. Oh. My. Goodness. Yes.

In fact, it was so much fun, I think I’d like to try it on a weekday when I can REALLY whip through the store. Maybe I could make a day of it and hit a few Target stores too. But of course I wouldn’t dream of doing this after I’m released from crutches because I know that would just be w-r-o-n-g.

If you know of other superstores with scooter shopping carts in the Austin area and would like to help me create the ultimate Scooter Shopping Cart Extravaganza–and thereby help me enjoy crutch time to the fullest, please add your comments below.