Thunk

As my daughter and I meandered casually down the milk and orange juice aisle at the grocery store last night we stumbled into one of those moments where you don't quite know how to react or behave.

Earlier in our visit I remarked to Shannon on the bravery of a fellow shopper for bringing four very small kids grocery shopping. She pushed one of those special kid carts shaped like a car and two of her kids sat inside that while an infant was tucked up in its carseat and another young girl of about 2 or 3 years buzzed around them.

We encountered them again in the milk and OJ aisle as they passed us. Well, we heard them first because the young girl was shrieking as if being chased and tearing down the aisle laughing in that innocent sort of way kids do when they're having a blast. I looked at her as she passed and was about to smile when it struck me that the look on this kid's face was rather demonic. Instead of laughing with glee she looked more like she was grinning maniacally and on a mission to destroy everything in her path.

Just as I was about to remark on this to Shannon, the little bugger tripped and face-planted right on an unassuming woman's shopping cart as she was turning the corner to enter our aisle.

The *THUNK* echoed noticeably followed by two seconds of stunned silence from the kid. Then came the pain as she began to sob. Her cries reached such a pitch that they weren't really sobs anymore. They were the silent (to us, I'm guessing only dogs and bats could hear her by this point) racking sobs of a kid who went from pure joy and laughter to sudden pain in a matter of seconds.

The odd thing is as I look back on this little incident in time is that I can remember lunging forward to try and stop her fall knowing I wasn't close enough and there was no stopping her momentum anyway, yet I can recall every detail of why she fell as if I was watching it in slow-motion (her little sandals just sort of stuck to the floor which broke her rhythm and down she went.)

The woman who's cart so rudely stopped the child's streak down the aisle and I looked at each other and I gave her a look of sympathy while she looked at me like she had just run over a beloved pet. She said, "I stopped my cart." And I just sort of shrugged my shoulders in a "What can you do?" sort of way while the mother of the child ran forward to console her.

Then we carried on shopping. What can you do? Kids fall down all the time but it's just weird when it's a random kid you don't know and they fall almost right in front of you. I'm sure the little girl was fine and will have quite a bump on the noggin to show for it - and will have forgotten all about it by dinnertime. But still. it was weird.