Maturity doesn’t start when your back hurts. Not even when you have to enlarge the font on your phone because you can’t see a thing, or when you buy a hideous jacket for the number of pockets it has. True maturity begins the day a shopping cart becomes your object of desire.
Read more High-speed service suspended between Girona and Barcelona due to a train breakdown in La Sagrera
For years I contemplated those wheeled contraptions with the same detachment one views an anthropological curiosity. To me, they were objects from another civilization. They were there, part of the urban landscape. Almost always dragged by older ladies. From them, a baguette would protrude like a periscope. I had always believed that owning one of these put you directly one step away from haggling over the price of chard.
I observed those women with a mix of tenderness and admiration. I never imagined I would end up on the same side.
Until the other day.
I was leaving the supermarket with several very heavy bags. Milk, detergent, cleaning products… The truth is, I’ve reached an age where I buy more descaler than beer, and more bifidus yogurts than stuffed olives.
At fifty meters, the handles began to cut off the circulation in my fingers. At a hundred, I felt my right shoulder slowly abandoning its anatomical position. Then something unsettling happened: I saw a shopping cart pass by and felt no pity. I felt envy.
Read more Teachers plan a single strike on Tuesday in Barcelona and a demonstration on the 14th
An envy that makes you blush. Discreet. That kind of envy that usually precedes an important revelation.
I was very alarmed.
Because I thought these things happen all at once. That one day you wake up and you already want a cart, comfortable shoes, gardening classes, and a cord to hang your glasses. But no. The cart starts earlier, in secret. When you discover that carrying fifteen kilos to prove something to the universe is a solemn stupidity. One is the age one is. And what an idiotic insistence of ours to suffer unnecessarily to appear younger.
What an idiotic insistence to suffer to appear younger: blessed cart
Since then, I look at shopping carts with different eyes. I’ve even discovered that some are frankly beautiful. There are sober, minimalist, almost Scandinavian ones. All foldable. Carts that seem to say: “Yes, I’m carrying leeks, but friends, with a style that’ll blow your mind!”
The other day I found myself absorbed by a blue plaid one in the window of a neighborhood hardware store. I stood there for a few seconds, calculating wheels, capacity, stability. Then I continued walking quickly, like someone who has just run into an old boyfriend.
Read more Enjoy today’s Primavera Sound live: Olivia Rodrigo, Gorillaz, The xx and My Bloody Valentine
But it was too late.
I think the cart and I had already recognized each other. And fallen in love.
