Normally I try not to take all three kids to the store with me, but I needed some essentials yesterday and didn't want to wait for Eric to get home from work. So after ample bribing, and promises of treats, we headed off to Wal-Mart. On the way into the store I noticed a little old lady with a walker waddling up the lot. She walked in and stopped in front of a row of carts and I grabbed one from another row. Of course the one I picked didn't have a functioning baby seat buckle, so I had to swap it out with another cart. As I was doing this, I noticed a Wal-Mart employee pushing more carts from the parking lot into the row that the old lady was standing in front of. Apparently, he didn't see her, because he just kept shoving them until they knocked her over. It was like slow motion, watching this poor old lady being pushed to the ground by a row of carts. She hit her head on the floor and either the fall or her broken glasses caused her head to bleed at the temple so there was blood gushing out of her head.
So there I stood, holding Eve, watching my other two girls staring at this lady on the floor. I froze. There were other people bustling about, calling 9-1-1, attending to her on the ground, getting paper towels to clean up the blood. All I could do was stand there and think about how horrible I would be as a nurse or a doctor. I thought about my sister and nurse friends, who would be those people holding onto her, cleaning her up. I like to think that if I hadn't been holding Eve, I would've been down on the ground with her. Although I'm not sure that I would have been, and that makes me feel like a heartless person.
After the incident, we headed in to try to get our shopping done. I couldn't concentrate on what I needed to get, my heart was still racing, and apparently the older girls felt the same way. When we got to the candy aisle, I told them to pick something out. They both just stared at everything in disgust. I said, "You don't have to get anything if you don't want to??". Ada said, "Maybe my heart doesn't feel like I want candy right now". I almost started to cry, it was so sweet.