Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Sometimes when I’m shopping in a store and I see things out of place or knocked over, I will go out of my way to upright them or organize them. I remember one day I was in the cake mix aisle of Wal-Mart, looking for ice cream sprinkles. There were a bunch of them, but most of them had fallen over and were in complete disarray. I spent a good five minutes putting them back in order.

Sometimes I feel guilty when I try on a LOT of clothes in the dressing room, and I’ll go out of my way to put the clothes back where I found them so the dressing room attendant doesn’t have to.

I will also go out of my way to collect stray buggies (shopping carts) in the store parking lot and return them to the cart corral or to the front of the store. It drives me nuts when people leave them in a parking spot and it either 1) blocks my car from parking in a good spot, or 2) is about to ding another car (possibly mine). This especially irks me when the cart corral (or the store’s front door) is less than 15 feet away. Sometimes I feel downright righteous when I get the cart and put it in its proper place, like I’ve earned my gold star for the day.

But here’s the really wacko thing: I have this silly notion that maybe one day, the store manager might pop out of hiding and give me an award for being such a helpful shopper. I actually fantasize that I might get caught being nice. Is that weird?

I think this means my obsessive-compulsiveness has hit a whole new level. I know the world doesn’t operate this way, but wouldn’t it be nice if it did? Think how it would improve our attitudes toward each other if we all acted like we might get caught being anal retentively obsessed with organizing store shelves, er, kind.