Teddy, 14, spins the grocery cart in circles as I try to price coffee. I choose a package, turn to drop it into the cart — and see that the cart is eight feet away.

“Teddy!” I say in exasperation.

“Shoot it, Mom!” he says. “Shoot it in!”

I have come from work, and just want to get home, not play basketball with a moving target.

Roy, 11, has never been able to keep his hands off the grocery cart as I navigate. He leans, tugs, drags, pushes. Worse is when both boys come to the store, because pitched battles erupt. Long legs kick at each other across the cereal aisle and, five minutes later, across the soup section. The boys are not mad, but laughing (fisticuffs are their idea of fun — at home they can’t even make sandwiches without elbowing), so I mostly just growl at them, and, just as when they were little, try to hurry out.

Shopping with small children was no picnic. Whole sessions of Mark Ross’s parenting classes were devoted to its survival. One friend of mine told her child he could not have a cream-stuffed pastry, and then, after leaving the store, observed custard on his face. He had shoplifted the item, and had to be marched back to the store to apologize and pay from his allowance.

When I brought Teddy to our market as a toddler, he would fight getting into the car seat, fight getting out of it, fight the grocery-cart seat, and fight getting back out of that.

Later he used to ride in the bottom of the cart, being small enough to sit there upright, and kept putting his feet down onto the floor, tripping up the cart. When I scolded him to bring his feet up, he, who always loved construction, said, “Those aren’t feet! They’re stabilizers.”

My nephew Sam, now 7, used to grab everything he could reach as he passed shelves. Today, he rides in the bottom shelf of the cart, lying belly-down, palming the floor. My sister turns to put food in the cart only to find it has been hand-propelled away down the aisle.

When Roy was born, it would take me all morning to get out of the house. He might have thrown my sandal in a flowerpot, or my new clogs in the diaper pail. I thought it would be heaven to reach a time when you didn’t need diapers, wipes, extra clothes, and toys to leave.

The boys got a little bigger and everything did get easier. What I didn’t know was that it gets harder again. They have no bottles, but they need chauffeurs. They’ve had soccer, chess club, friends, skiing, football and bike riding. They no longer have tantrums in the store. But they still make noise.

As Roy rides upright on the front of the cart, facing backwards, Teddy grabs it and charges forward, his brother clinging as if on a garbage truck swiftly reversing.

All I want is some cereal, and I hastily pluck boxes off the shelves while warning, “No mowing down pedestrians!” At a shriek, I turn to see Roy pinned to the shelves, and I angrily put a stop to it. Yet next time I turn around, Roy has eagerly hopped back up onto the cart, and is being rammed again.

I’d like to think they will mellow. But I also remember once being picked up at an airport in Germany by two friends, Timy and Kurt, in their 20s, and how our first stop was to a supermarket. Timy was fascinated that the shopping-cart wheels rotated smoothly in every direction: “These are awesome!” While we shopped, he spun the cart in circles.

Alison Osius lives in Carbondale and can be reached at aosius@hotmail.com.