I took my toddler to Target one day. She started trying to climb out of the toddler seat of the cart within five minutes, and within six (yes, six minutes), she had squirmed out of the seatbelt and was falling, face first, toward the floor when I caught her with one hand.

Because she was determined to push the cart. Apparently at 16 months old, she was too grown up to ride in the child seat. Now that she could walk, she had all sorts of ideas about independence.

I soon found myself carrying all twenty-nine pounds of her, squirming under one arm like a football while navigating the aisles and pushing my cart with the other, a cart weighed down with cat litter and dog food and light bulbs and huge packs of paper products.

At several points during this adventure–like the moment she managed to grab the lightbulbs and throw them on the floor where they broke and then a mother carrying a newborn in her arms slipped on the broken glass before I could find a worker to help with the mess, and then when I thought I’d found a worker, it turned out that he was just a shopper in a red shirt–during moments like that, I contemplated just walking out of the store and leaving my cart by the cash registers. Still full of unpaid items. (Take that, you Criticizers of People Who Don’t Return Their Carts in the Parking Lot.)

I kept telling myself, lots of people have toddlers, and they go shopping every day. This cannot possibly be as hard as I think it is.

Somehow, we made it through the check-out lane.

And then we had to navigate the parking lot. By this point, I was sweaty and tense and exhausted and ready for an iced coffee. And a nap.

I put my toddler in the car and buckled her in her car seat and put the bags in the trunk. Then I looked at her in her seat. She was still for the first time in an hour. And I looked at my shopping cart, parked between two cars. And I said to myself, “No, I am absolutely not returning that cart because I am not leaving my child in the car by herself, and I am definitely not taking her out again.”

(And for those influencers whose toddlers sit in the cart–or even HELP load the groceries into the trunk–Good. For. You. But you have NO IDEA what the rest of us are coping with. Also the coping is not real. We are not coping. Just pretending to cope. While we watch the rest of you with your little helper angels.)

I flopped into the driver’s seat and let myself have a good cry.

And then I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw my child, who was barely containable just moments ago, smiling, and calm and apparently happy. And I said (with a bit of sarcasm that was, admittedly, unnecessary), “What? Do you think we’re going to the park now?”

And she smiled and squealed, “Yes!”

And that was the moment I realized that I am just not a natural when it comes to parenting.

In the end, three things happened:

We did go to the park that day.

I started shopping a lot more on Amazon and Instacart.

I did not return another shopping cart to the cart return area for many years.