Bad Roberta Goes to the Store

When my oldest was 1 or 2, I told her this story. For some reason, it amused her. Eventually, I wrote it down.

Bad Roberta goes to the store

Once upon a time, not so far away and not so long ago, there lived a little girl about your age. Her name was Roberta, but everyone called her Bad Roberta, because she was so very bad.

One day, Bad Roberta's mother took her to the grocery store. Well! The first thing Bad Roberta did was run over to a display of cans and pull out one of the bottom cans. The entire display of 296 cans crashed to the floor with a terrible noise. Cans rolled everywhere! People tripped! Their groceries went flying! One can flew right through the front window of the store.

Bad Roberta's mother picked her up and put her in the shopping cart.

"Bad Roberta," she said, "since you are so bad you will have to ride up here where I can keep an eye on you."

Was that the end of Bad Roberta's badness in the grocery store? No it was not. Whenever her mother left the cart parked close enough to the shelves for Bad Roberta to reach things on the shelves, she grabbed them and put them in the cart. Soon the cart was almost full of things that bad Roberta had picked off the shelves. Her mother was upset about the incident with the pile of cans, and she did not notice all the extra stuff in the cart. When they got to the checkout, Bad Roberta started whining for some candy. This kept her mother so busy trying to quiet her down, that she did not notice the strange groceries being rung up and packed into bags. When she was told the total cost, $439, it did seem a little high, but she just wrote a check and they went home. She was in a hurry to get Bad Roberta out of the store before any more bad things happened.

When they got home, Bad Roberta's father began to put away the groceries. He was very surprised at some of the purchases. "What are we going to do with pickled dogs ears?" he asked, "and why did you buy six packages of dried sea cucumbers?"

"Bad Roberta!!" shouted her mother. But Bad Roberta was nowhere to be found.

The end