Skinnerian shopping

When the kids and I get groceries, we usually go to Wild Foods, where they have tiny carts for children to push. There's a fair amount of faux racing, but last week's carting had extra oomph, and there were many intra-familial collisions.

I was prepared to pull the plug on the whole expedition -- yuppies and hippies alike were appalled by my apparently inadequate daddying. Then I pulled out a move from Grand Master D's preschool, adapted for the materials at hand like a behavioral psychologist MacGyver. We adopted the three twist-tie rule. If three twist ties were secured to the cart -- awarded for inappropriate behavior -- we would leave on the spot, notifying a worker of the location of our carts and groceries on our way out. GMD earned two.

He would have earned a third for punching the cardboard cutout of a Peruvian peasant woman, but she was by the exit.