My friend and I used to go to the Dallas Trade Mart/World Trade Center to go shopping a couple of times a year. This place is not open to the public (or wasn't back then). You have to be registered as a business to get in and shop on floor after marvelous floor of everything from housewares to furniture to clothing. The first of each month is called Market Days and the vendors there have fantastic deals that are mostly cash and carry rock-bottom prices.

So here's my story: one day we were at the Trade Mart. I was about 6 months pregnant. We were pulling our little cart around behind us and loading up on good deals. In one part of the market there are escalators. There is a small sign that says no carts on escalators. But we were in a hurry to get to a particular vendor's place on the second floor. So we ignored the sign.

My friend gets on the escalator first pulling the cart. I am behind the cart. We ride up without incident. But at the top, the cart suddenly becomes wedged in and can't get loose. I started to step back down the escalator because I obviously couldn't go up. There were people behind me and they started stepping back down too. But I wasn't fast enough and the moving steps kept bashing me into the stuck cart.

Meanwhile my friend was frantically pulling the cart and I was pushing from my end. It was getting to be a bad situation with people piling up behind me on the escalator. Genteel southern ladies were starting to raise their voices behind me because the steps were bringing them up but they couldn't see what was going on to stop them from getting off.

Finally my friend hauls off and kicks the crap out of that cart. It dislodges and goes flying up in the air but luckily, she still had hold of the handle. She hauls it out of the way and me and all those ladies came tumbling off the escalator. My friend takes off running and pulling the cart behind her. I'm waddling along as fast as I can with my enormous pregnant belly and swollen ankles.

We end up hiding in a shop down the hallway where we collapse onto the floor. We were actually crying and laughing at the same time. I think we had some sort of hysterical laughing fit going on. We were hiding because we broke one of the sacred rules of the Trade Mart about carts on escalators and we almost got caught. Under no circumstances did we want to get kicked out of there and miss out on a whole day of good shopping deals.