[QUOTE=CanvasShoes]
???
And what do you suggest women who have more than two little ones do? Yes, yes, I RE a. Lize that there are the “stacked” ones. So what? Every single woman should have to get a copy cat stroller because you are too clumsy-footed to get around, or too tongue-tied and self-righteous to simply say “excuse me”?
[/QUOTE]
Leaving aside whether the OP is an ass or not (where this thread seems to be headed) I am neither clumsy footed or incapable of saying “excuse me” but I was hit by a stroller this week and it hurt.
I didn’t even see the person coming. I couldn’t, because I was waiting for the light and had my back turned to her when she plowed into me with her stroller. She didn’t even apologize, too busy talking on her cell phone.
It’s less the size of the stroller than a misunderstanding that the earth, sun, stars and moon don’t revolve around certain people and their “travel systems.”
Today, I was walking my dog in the park near me, where I saw a woman chatting on her cell phone, pushing her children in a twin jogging stroller along a bike path. This caused cyclists to swerve into the jogging lane or into the traffic lanes. Is that fair?
I work for a bookstore. On some days, you can barely move in the children’s department because of the strollers. The parents or nannies often aren’t buying anything. Instead, they’re letting their children destroy the books and letting their strollers block the aisles so it takes twice as long to retrieve a book for someone who actually wants to purchase something. Is that fair?
One branch of the chain I work for, decided to ask people to park their strollers in a particular section of the store so that aisles wouldn’t be so crowded and everyone would have a chance to move around more freely. There was a large outcry about this with some people saying it was an “attack on motherhood.”
Is that fair?
On my way to work, I have to pass two huge construction sites. This has resulted in halving the sidewalk space. Parents,nannies and their strollers still congregate and chat blocking the entrances/exits to the sidewalks for everyone else. Is that fair? And no, they don’t automatically move when I say “excuse me.”
In the scheme of things, these are miniscule grievances but I sometimes think they are symptoms of how insular and selfish people have become (or maybe always were, it just took me a while to notice).
Also, I’m a twin and my mom had a huge carriage to wheel us around. She has said on a couple of occasions how suprised she is by people who take large strollers into crowded areas. She said she wouldn’t have thought of doing something similar when she had the carriage. It was incovenient both for her navigation-wise and she didn’t want to disrupt other people doing whatever they needed to do.