My Little Piggy

Every Sunday, on our weekly trip to frolic in The Devil's Playground, I reward The Pony for his help with two dollars for the game room. He usually plays some shooting game that takes a long time. Or the amount of time that I wait in line for one of the Devil's Handmaidens to check me out. One week, he had put his second dollar into that machine, and I had to stand idle while he finished his game. That's not happenin'. A fact of which The Pony is aware.

Lately, he's been using that second dollar on a game called Road Trip. The dollar gets him three spins on a big Wheel-of-Fortune-like spinner with various mileage marked off in different colors. To spin, he pushes a dealybobber like what you see in a cartoon as a plunger for a TNT box. If The Pony can score 250 miles or higher in his three spins, he wins a small prize in a plastic bubble, like you get out of a seventy-five-cent gum-machine-like dispenser. OR, he can lose that total and get three more spins. He always takes the spins. He's going for a ten-dollar Devil's gift card, or a computer game that beckons him through the glass.

Today, The Pony decided to take his small prize. That's because I normally berate him for losing my dollar and having nothing to show for it. He pushed the button and his prize fell out. He looked through the plastic. "It's a pig! A little plastic pig. You can have it."

I was fine with that. I don't have a little plastic pig. I told The Pony, "It can be My Little Piggy."

"Just don't break it," he cautioned. "Like you did My Little Pony from McDonalds."

"For your information, #1 and I did not 'break' your little pony. We wore it out. It was SO much fun--a little carousel. Pink! We took turns spinning it until we wore it out."

"But still. You broke it."

"Did you want to play with it?"

"NO!"

"Then lay off about My Little Piggy. Here. Lay him in the seat of the cart. I'll get him outside."

In stowing the groceries away in T-Hoe's rear end, I had to shuffle the bags. Some bread loaves were put on top of My Little Piggy. We had to separate The Pony's school snacks to leave in the car, and put the cold items under my coat, and the heavy things where lighter things could stack on top. We had the second-best parking spot ever, the second space in the row directly in front of the doors. A little blue mini car was holding up traffic waiting for us to vacate our prime storefront property. I sent The Pony to take the cart back, and hopped into T-Hoe's cockpit.

You know where this is headed, right?

We left the lot, cruised past the packed McDonald's and money-stealing Sonic, coasted over the rickety bridge, climbed past the cemetery where my dad is buried, sped by the greasy bar and grill that serves the BEST burgers and fried mushrooms, and IT HIT ME.

"MY LITTLE PIGGY! I left him in the cart! Didn't you see him when you put it in the rack?"

"Noooo. I was hurrying so we could leave."

"Well, I'm not turning around. I'm not spending three dollars of gas and twenty minutes of my time to look for a one-dollar pig."

"That's okay. I didn't want it anyway. You're the one who wanted it."

Just like My Little Pony.