I usually do my own grocery shopping with minimal to no assistance. I may be creative and adaptive, but I have yet to find a way to push a shopping cart while using my wheelchair. I refuse to use the power carts because I really don't need to add battery power to my erratic driving as an announcement would follow me throughout the store "Clean up on aisle 9....Clean up on aisle 8...Clean up on aisle 7". I also have no desire to trade my $4000 wheelchair for a wheelchair with an attached lap basket and trust that nothing will happen to my chair as it sits basically unattended at the front of the store. That is not a fair trade. So what I usually do is use two or three reusable shopping bags hanging on the back of my wheelchair, and as I shop I place the items into these bags. With proper packing, I can easily get a week's worth of groceries this way. I rock at packing reusable shopping bags, I just need to learn to be aware of the added weight on the back of my wheelchair. Thank God for wheelie bars!! And I swear there is a conspiracy to place whatever items I need on the top shelf so that I either have to play damsel in distress and ask for help (ugh!) or unbuckle my feet, undo my seatbelt, and hold on to the shelf to do the amazing standing gimp trick. That one really freaks people out because they assume that since I am in a wheelchair, especially one with more complex foot restraints, that I can not stand, so when I suddenly pull myself into a standing position to reach something they totally freak out. Sometimes I choose that one just for the effect. ;)
Well, on Monday I had the opportunity to go grocery shopping with an accomplice. Because we were going to receive a decent amount of snow (about 8-10", not that impressive by Michigan standards but enough to limit a wheelchair's accessibility until everything is plowed, salted, and plowed again), my Dad took me grocery shopping so I could get anything I might need for the next few days. His job was to push the shopping cart behind me, and my job was to toss items into the cart over my shoulder. This worked well until he became distracted, and not having eyes in the back of my head (as much as my students would beg to differ) I picked up a package and tossed it over my shoulder. Instead of hearing it land in the shopping cart, I heard it land on the floor. The woman scanning the shelves next to me turned and stared at me as if I had lost my mind, having just taken a package of food and thrown it over my shoulder for no apparent reason. I just laughed as she backed away rapidly. When my distracted father caught back up to me, I told him that he had missed something, and asked him if he could please pick it up off the floor for me. :)
When we went to check out there were a lot of other people doing the winter storm stock up, and there was one cashier working. Great planning. So I went to wait in line. The older woman ahead of me turned and waved me ahead of her. I tried to tell her I was fine waiting, but she insisted and well, her cart was filled while mine was not so I figured if she wanted to do something selfless but silly who was I to stop her? Inside I was thinking "sucker!" because I am anything but pitiful or helpless. Then the guy ahead of her did the same thing. I seriously tried to protest, but to no avail, so I went from 4th in line to 2nd. I mean, I have a seat while I am waiting, its not like I have to stand in line people!
Then the fun part - the putting away of the groceries in a kitchen roughly the size of a handicapped bathroom stall. There is no room to turn my wheelchair around in the kitchen - it is pull in, back out. I have to wheel out to change my mind. Storage is limited in my kitchen...heck space is limited in my kitchen, so I have to be creative with my storage options especially adding reasonable accessibility into the mix. By the time all of that was done, I was ready for one of the special treat ice cream cones I had bought - I think it was well earned!