A girl and her bat go shopping

It was a Saturday morning, the day of the determined in the supermarket business. During the week there are the stay-at-home moms and the welfare moms and the quick-stoppers and the liquid-lunchers, people who can spare a minute to go the supermarket more than once a week, some of them more than once a day. On Sunday, the supermarket is an outing, more fun than church, cheaper than the mall.

But on Saturday shopping for food is a serious business. The Saturday shoppers have one day, a couple of hours really, to do the whole job for the whole week, and they have to get everything just right. The market will be crowded on Saturday mornings and the inventory will walk away briskly. There will be nice long lines at every open register, and there will never be enough of them open. And every cart at every register will be loaded and then some; ain't nobody going anywhere any time soon. Only bus stations and casinos are more pervasively dominated by people so palpably grim.

Which is what made the cute kids such a welcome relief. We were at the tail end of a long line at the "twelve items or less" register. Not, mind you, "twelve items or fewer", but they had added the detachable "cash only/no checks" signlet. I've always thought "no stutterers!" would make a nice additional signlet, in the same way that highway driving would be much improved if there were signs reading, "the left lane is reserved for drivers who do not observe the speed limit". Perhaps we can take care of all of these problems with one generic sign: "if you feel you might be more comfortable elsewhere, you're right".

But the truth is I forgot all about the wait as I became acquainted with this charming little brood. The children were a boy and a girl, both about four. The boy was half-an-inch taller, and six or eight pounds heavier, which is a lot at that age.

"Hi, mister," said the little girl. "I'm a pirate!"

"Yeah," said the little boy. "And I'm her pet bat!"

You bet....

They were both standing up in the cart part of the shopping cart, which is typical, and the twelve items or fewer were crammed up in the cheesy little kiddie seat.

Which is typical. The supermarket chains have teams of lawyers working day and night to try to figure out what to do about this. They're scared spitless that some young idiot is going to spill his brains all over the exquistely waxed linoleum on aisle seven and sue for every drop of drool he dribbles. Why roll along as just another meatball when you can be set for life as a vegetable?

The latest lawyerly solution is a modified shopping cart with two actual seats for children, big red plastic seats as inviting as the seat behind the driver on the school bus. This attorney's idea of a shopping cart is only slightly larger than a tractor-trailer rig, but, alas, it's not as maneuverable. Future innovations may entail cages, strait jackets or lawyers with video cameras and liability waivers.

"Yo, Alex, Alexis," said the dad. "What's the rule?"

"If you can stand, you can walk," the two children said together. They collapsed to their knees and waited for their next opportunity to stand up. And whatever solution is arrived at by the attorneys and their friends in the courts and the legislatures, you may be assured that parental responsibility will play no part in it. Parental responsibility works, of course, where nothing else does. But the one question every attorney on either side of the personal injury equation is duty bound to ask is: "What's in it for me?" You won't find a Jaguar in a Cracker Jack box, after all; at least not unless you break a tooth.

"I'm buying a Kit Kat bar with my own money," confided young Alex. He held up the candy bar and the two of them sang the "gimme a break" song, their voices high and broken and joyous. His hair was short and it looked like it had been cut under a bowl while the boy had writhed for pure spite. He had a little bit of a cowlick, and a bright flame of mischief in his greenish gray eyes.

"What about you?" I asked Alexis. "Are you buying candy with your money, too?"

"No way!" she replied. "I'm saving my money. I can share his candy." Alex nodded, which made me think they might not be siblings. Alexis is a stunning little child, a Moroccan princess writ small. Alex is thin but she is thinner, and her shortish dark hair frames her face. Her brown eyes are immense and her nose is tiny and her mouth is small and finely formed. She is playful and her voice is high and delicate, but as silly as she might get she never cedes dominion over all she surveys.

I looked to the dad, scrunching up my face in the scowl of speculation. "Fraternal twins?" Alex, Alexis--it made more sense than not.

He shook his head. "Alexis is a friend of the family. They go everywhere together."

"He's not my brother," said Alexis. "He's my friend."

I asked Alex, "Is Alexis your girlfriend?"

"She's just my friend."

"I've heard that before..."

"But I'm her pet bat!"

I smiled. "I've heard that before, too..."

The dad had made it to the front of the line and he had paid for his stuff. He said, "Alex, time to pay for that candy bar."

Alex handed over his Kit Kat bar and the cashier ran it past the laser. "Whoa!" said his dad. "Three for a dollar! What a smart shopper you are! Thirty-five cents with tax, and you've got twenty cents left over. You gonna buy us lunch?"

"Da-uhd!" said Alex.

"Just teasing. You can put it back in your bank."

"You put it in your pocket."

"Good idea. I'll put it in my bank."

"Da-uhd!"

He loaded the bag of stuff into the cheesy little kiddie seat. He said, "I'm for the road, toads."

"Where are we going?" Alexis asked.

With a perfectly straight face he replied, "I was thinking of the trans-galactic vortex of snot."

The children did not bat an eye. Alex said, "Is it hard to get to?"

His dad pulled at his chin. "I think we'd better buy the super unleaded..."

The cashier said, "Your children are so well-behaved." This is untrue, of course. They're funny and confident and spontaneous and charming, but they're nothing like compliant or obedient or conforming--or quiet. They're accepted, obviously, and accepting. They get the positive attention they need for their virtues, so they don't have to seek negative attention with vice.

The dad turned up his palms in an exagerrated shrug. "If I don't do what they say, they put me in time-out."

Alexis laughed out loud. "Yeah!" she said. "'Cause I'm in charge!"

"Yeah!" said Alex, thumbing his chest. "And I'm her pet bat!"