How to Wrangle Two Kids and a Cart Full of Groceries in a Costco Bathroom While Your Life Flashes Before Your Eyes

With apologies to Marjorie Priceman and the traditional Catholic understanding of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Introduction

Taking two small children to Costco is really very easy. Place them (the children) in a shopping cart, choose items from the warehouse, and pay for them (the items). Select dinner options from the food court kiosk, eat, and go home.

Unless, of course, one of the aforementioned small children interrupts the meal with the mighty and determined declaration, “I HAVE TO GO POTTY.”

In that case, gird your loins.

But let’s back up a little. The girl you see wending her feckless way through this story is me. The two children are my preschool-aged sons. We shall refer to the parties involved as Andy and Ben, though these are not actually their names, to protect the guilty. We shall also switch from second-person narrative and a how-to style to a first-person past-tense, because it is easier both to write and read. Also, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World only goes so far comedically.

The Chronicle

The day? Sultry, hovering above 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The time? Approaching dinner, around 4:30 P.M. The errand? Pick up two prescriptions at the Costco pharmacy, purchase a few groceries, and get dinner at the food court before taking the boys to a friend’s house for the evening. In a blithe spirit of optimism, or perhaps the sin of Pride in my own conceit, I texted my friend, “shall I bring [your kids] some soft serve from Costco when we come?” Tuck this fragment away for later.

“Now, remember the rules,” I instructed my beloved offspring as they parkoured into various illegal crevices of the shopping cart. “Only Mother may push the perambulator; no one is to snatch merchandise from the stacks; anyone howling or brutalizing their brother will forfeit ice cream after our expedition.”

No one listened. We were off to a smashing start. On our way from the entrance to the pharmacy, Ben got in and out of the cart thrice, and Andy hung off the butt end of it and declared himself to be the “crash checker.”

In the line for the pharmacy, the children were aboundingly cheerful to the pharmacy tech, in hopes of obtaining filthy lucre dinosaur stickers. Their efforts were not in vain, but when the stickers were produced, they argued over the options and the queue behind us stacked up six deep.

Once the medication that keeps me tethered to vestiges of sanity had been obtained, we cruised the aisles. “How many groceries are we getting?” Andy demanded suspiciously.

“About six,” I said, hoping this would throw him off from complaining that we were going to be there foreverrrrrrr, while also giving myself sufficient leeway to impulse purchase as the Spirits of Costco directed me. We avoided other, keener-eyed shoppers, picked up bell peppers and water and two baguettes and strawberries and granola bars and hand soap, sampled some lemonade and some burrata and some popsicles, and stood in silence to watch the rotisserie chickens revolve in their sauna.

By the time we made it to the checkout, with decidedly more than six items in the cart, and a disproportionate amount of filial shoving, my patience (such as it was) had worn thin and given way to Wrath. “SIT DOWN NOW,” I told both children, “or there will be NO ICE CREAM.” Andy’s careful accounting for Number of Items in the Cart did not, fortunately, extend to Number of Times Mother Has Issued an Empty Threat.

At the food court kiosk, we stand at last, overcome by the vast selection. Cheese or pepperoni pizza? Or hot dog? The children settle on pepperoni (Andy) and cheese (Ben) and in a moment of what may be considered the sin of Gluttony, I impulsively order a whole pizza (half pepperoni half cheese). It is a better deal, when you consider leftovers, than purchasing three individual slices. The children select their ice cream (strawberry twist with chocolate sauce) and I remember to order two, so we can take a second cup of ice cream to our friends’ house. Because we will finish our meal so swiftly, so efficiently, and sail to the parking lot with our purchases and our pizza box and our strawberry soft serve which will definitely not melt even a little bit.

The custom-ordered pizza takes a long time. The sailors grow mutinous. I tear off chunks of baguette, but they are not pacified for long. “Here,” I say in desperation, and I connect to the Costco Wi-Fi and pull up a Danny Go pirate video. I avoid eye contact with other, stronger parents who are waiting for the harassed food court employees to deliver their dinners. I am no stranger to screen time, but the passing of the cell phone in a public place feels like an invitation to judgment. Nevertheless, it quiets my cage of apes, and our pizza arrives a few minutes after the ice cream is ready. The children clamor for lemonade. I balance paper cups, plastic cups, straws, lids flimsier than the White House’s grip on sanity, and hustle us to a table. I forgot to get myself a fountain drink, but no matter. I tear open our 40-pack of water bottles like a ravenous beast.

“I Have to Go Potty,” announces Ben, in title case, standing upright on the picnic-style bench, just as we sink our teeth into the first slices.

“You Have Got to Be Kidding Me,” I reply in kind. Is it Greed, as I look down at my barely-touched dinner? Or is it Sloth, as I gaze upon the vast expanse of grocery and grease-stained pizza napkins and a brother with a murderous look upon his countenance at the thought of being dragged to the bathroom?

“I howd it in, Mommy,” says Ben, reassuringly. “I wait.”

Hmmm. This is not promising. But the alternative is chaos, so I mutter “okay good job” and return to arguing with Andy over his swiftly melting frozen dessert. I never thought the words “you MUST eat some of this hot fast food loaded with trans fats before you consume any cold food loaded with trans fats,” or some approximation thereof, would ever come out of my mouth, but here we are.

Nearby, another family placidly consumes their victuals, the two parents alternating between giving loving bites to their solitary toddler (a girl, not that it matters) and maintaining a conversation between themselves. I, the lone stalwart propping up my own army of two, despise the teamwork parents with great loathing, but chastise myself for indulging in Envy, and shove another napkin under Ben’s lemonade cup.

Somehow, we finish. Just as I have stashed the pizza box on top of the water bottle pack on the bottom tray of the cart and load the children in, preparing to join the Nile-long line of customers waiting to have their receipt checked at the exit, Ben pipes up again.

“NOW I go potty, Mommy.”

Biscuits.

It can’t be helped. Off we trundle. The restrooms are clear at the other end of the warehouse, and we have to doggedly fight our way upstream against the flow of foot traffic. “Why can’t we just go hooooooooooooome,” whines Andy, who earlier in the afternoon informed me that we had been running errands for a million years. (He was not terribly far off. Mea culpa.)

“Because your brother has to GO,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “and because we are still going to J and M’s house later, remember?”

At the ladies’ room, I am agog, I am aghast. MERCHANDISE IS NOT PERMITTED IN THE RESTROOMS, intones the sign, or it would if it had an audio component. The cart cannot go in with us.

But what if someone steals our water bottles? Our fruit? Our torn baguette and rapidly liquefying strawberry sludge? “Andy, I want you to stand here,” I direct as I peel Ben’s sticky self out of the cart and loop my purse around my neck. “Hold onto the cart with your hand and DO. NOT. LET. GO. I will be RIGHT HERE.” I thrust Ben into the closest stall—no, that one is disgusting. I thrust Ben into the next closest stall, craning my neck like a giraffe beyond the door so I can still see Andy. I can’t, actually, but I can see the cart. “ARE YOU THERE?” I demand, as Ben disrobes in totality (a choice both unsanitary and unnecessary).

“I’m right here, Mom,” Andy calls back. His hand, emerging into view, jostles the cart back and forth.

“Don’t do that,” I shriek. “You’ll spill the lemonades and the ice cream.”

He gives another shake for good measure.

“YOU GO OUT OF HEWE,” Ben hollers from the commode. “I NEED HAVE PWIVACY.”

“You’re three and can’t wipe and for heaven’s sake, I gave birth to you,” I grouse, but I step out of the stall and hold it shut with my hand. I am closer to Andy now, physically, but I also can’t see him anymore because the darn privacy wall is in the way. If I were a better artist I’d draw you a picture of the Costco restroom layout but you’ll just have to use your imagination.

“ANDY,” I say, and he pops his little head around the corner of the privacy wall and gives me a little wave and the smirk in his big brown eyes makes me almost melt into a puddle, but not quite because I am still holding on to the top of the toilet stall door. “STAND STILL,” I say, and he doesn’t.

Other patrons bustle in and out of the bathroom. Ben makes un-promising noises from within the stall. “Isn’t he done yet?” Andy demands, hopping from one foot to another on a floor tile that is making an ominously sticky sort of sound, and Ben shouts, “NO ANDY! I POOPIN!” and I want to bang my head against the stall door but I am afraid of the germs and nasties.

“Why don’t you go too, since we’re here” I suggest to Andy, but he has hopped back to the cart to prevent petty theft, and another woman has entered the stall next to us and given a loud exclamation of disgust. I want to hope that she does not think we created the sanitation crisis therein but I am honestly too tired to care.

I disassociate for a moment and dream about being a small zoo animal living in a climate-controlled terrarium with nothing to do but eat kibble and exercise and sleep.

“YOU WIPE ME NOW?” Ben demands, shaking me out of my fantasy, and my pen shall draw a veil over the details thereof. Suffice it to say that he was Not Done Yet.

Somehow, we emerge from the stall fully clothed and ready for disinfecting. Andy is blow-drying his head under the blow dryer. I do not ask. The sink is too tall for Ben alone, and only about one out of seven million public restrooms provides a stool for toddlers, so I have to hastily wash my hands while he yodels with impatience and then hoist him onto my knee, purse banging into his bottom, so he can wash his own.

A beautiful Costco employee with completely unsweaty hair, shirt that is not hanging askew and not a purse necklace to be seen, has entered the bathroom to sanitize the toilet beside Ben’s. “Good job, mom,” she says to me, looking amused, as I load the children back into the cart—insisting that they both sit in the child seats this time—and haul our caravan out.

I did a good job. I will cling to this and remember it. Thank you, beautiful Costco lady.

We emerge into the furnace of the parking lot, bedraggled of appearance but staunch in heart. The car is an oasis in the desert, if I can only get there with this cart that weighs eight thousand pounds (crammed as it is with children, groceries, water bottles, and thoroughly melted ice cream).

“Mom, I fink I am too big for this seat now,” Andy confides.

“Probably,” I say. “This is probably the last time you’ll sit in it. On our next trip if we tried it we’d probably have to get the firefighters to cut you out of it.”

Ben is horrified. “FIREFIGHTERS NOT TUT HIM OUT,” he reproaches me.

“I meant they’d cut the seat,” I explain lamely, “not him.”

The car is a billion degrees, and as I tumble the stuff into it, the ice cream which is now a beverage sloshes onto my arm.

“Mom, I think I have to—” Andy begins, as I start up the engine, and I clench the wheel in my distressingly sticky hands and say, “YOU CAN WAIT UNTIL WE GET TO OUR FRIENDS’ HOUSE.”

To his credit, he does. He’s a decent little fellow. In all honesty, they both are.

What This Means For Our Future

I have three options going forward:

1. Pick up my monthly Brain Pills after my husband gets home around 7:30, squeaking to Costco and back before the pharmacy closes at 8:30, and use grocery pickup or whatever the heck normal people do

2. Tell my children we are never going to shop at Costco again, and switch pharmacies and cut up my black Executive Card and change my identity and move to Tuscaloosa

3. Suck it up and keep doing this until the kids are old enough to be left home alone.

I am taking suggestions from all and sundry, but it does not follow that I will be acting in accordance with them.

Conclusion

I believe I have, after all this, earned a slice of apple pie and ice cream, but I am not willing to go out and buy it, nor to globetrot and make it myself, so I shall have to be contented with a popsicle. And some torn baguette.

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This post is not in any way sponsored by Costco Wholesale but we are certainly open to the possibility in the future.

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