The Curious Story of a Checkers Trolley at the River

This is a follow up story to The Curious Story of an 8 Year Old Boy, a Traffic Cone, and an Old Man

How Did a Checkers Trolley / Shopping Cart Get Here?

I’m a proudly ferocious walker. Two dogs, sometimes a few more, and I head down to the Braamfontein Spruit for some exercise, and while we’re there I pick up litter. My goal is always at least one full-to-the-brim supermarket bag, pushing back the members of the Dirty-Side (cue Star Wars intro). During one such walk, in November 2024, a friend and I spotted a trolley / shopping cart from Checkers (South African supermarket chain). How did it get here we wondered? We paused and did the maths:

• Rivonia Checkers is 2.5km away,
• Bryanston Checkers is 3.5km away
• Winnie Mandela / Nicolway Checkers is 4km away

For the next 30 minutes we created wonderfully expansive narratives as to who would have walked a trolley this far and then abandoned it on the edge of the river.

8 Year Old Steps In

It’s now May 2025, 6 months later, and I keep walking past that Checkers Trolley. During that time it hasn’t shifted, and it hasn’t moved. Each time I walk by the 8 year old voice inside of me keeps shouting, louder and louder, that we should take it home.

Imagine what we could do with a shopping trolley?

I’m a little wiser now to that voice. “Yes, imagine what we could do with it? Actually what would we do with it? What would you use a shopping trolley for?”, says the adult voice. “Outside of telling your mates you have one, what other value could it possibly provide, and where would we keep it?”

We’re Taking It Back!

After a little more back and forth between these two voices in my head, the adult voice stepped in decisively, and proclaimed we were taking it back to Checkers. It is, after-all, their trolley, and we didn’t really have a right to claim it as our own (it seems they cost somewhere between R2500-R3000 a piece). A few days later I headed off to the river to pick it up and return it to the first Checkers I passed (Bryanpark). The car guard in the parking lot looked bemused as I pulled it out of the back of my vehicle. It was a little muddy and had a fair amount of Jozi winter grass stuck to it. The security inside of Checkers looked confused as I wheeled it in and placed it in his care (I felt it improper to simply leave it outside the store for shoppers to discover).

Score 1-1

And that’s the story. Child voice wins the traffic cone and adult voice wins the trolley. Can’t wait to see what the next adventure will entail? The Curious Story of an 8 Year Old, a Traffic Cone, and an Old Man