One thing that has me scared out of my guts about the possibility of raising a kid is the tendency of people with children to take up way too much space.
Whether you have kids or not, you know what I’m talking about. Screaming, spoiled rotten kids on planes; folks in groups talking about their kids as if nothing else in the world existed, “Johnny’s day care is $750.00 a week but they start teaching kids trigonometry when they are 18 months old, so he’ll have a head start in this competitive economy”; unsupervised children running through areas of streets and sidewalks where little human feet should not tread; 3,000 square foot homes for 4 people (2 children/two adults). It’s all too much.
I am not a space taker upper, or at least I try not to be. I squish me and all of my shit into a tiny ball when I am riding public transportation or walking through a crowded area. I do not like to be stepped on, and I try with all of my might not to step on anyone else.
I ride my bike to work and back home almost everyday, and mommy walkers on the Gallup park trail are my new irritant—the thing that makes me swear thirty dirty words up inside my head. These ladies take up way too much space. Sometimes they walk in fours sometimes in twos but what ever the case, with two trailer size strollers side-by-side and back-to-back on the trail, they become an enormous brick wall that is practically impenetrable even when I shout out that I am about to clip all of them at a relatively fast pace.
Cause when I yell, “On your left,” they are usually so caught up in their little bubble world of kids, exercise, and the latest health food at the Whole Foods that they can’t hear good old me shouting. So I have to come to a full stop and yell, nicely (but not too nicely), “excuse me please; I need to get by.”
And then they might see me and edge their stroller semi-trucks ever so slightly over, so that I have 2 centimeters of trail to pass them on. Other times, when their exclusive world of plastic baby RV joggers and chatter take precedent over everything else on the planet, I am left to venture off the asphalt and over the grassy/muddy/bumpy/watery edge of the trail.
I mean the geese are more willing to recognize that I exist and move their families off the trail—hissing and making a fuss all the while, but at least they see me and at least they move out of the way.
So, I swear now on the holiest manhole cover around that I will only ever use an umbrella stroller. A little folder-upper that only takes up two feet (at the very most) of space.
3 comments:
hey injector, i am right there with you on abolishing all hummer-like strollers from bike paths and more! you should look at my new blog inspired by my chickens: chickendiction.blogspot.com
they are the devil i tell you. it is like a hummer for babies. wearing your baby in a sling or mai tai is even better than an umbrella stroller.
I loathe those types. And one downside of parenthood is the inevitability of having to deal with many people like that. But they're generally scared of Lesbians - and I use that to my full advantage.
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