Notes from the other end of the stroller.

I've heard a lot of complaints lately about women with big strollers using them as battering rams. I had to stop and think: Have I ever done that?

Oh yes, yes I have. Generally, in a crowded place, after about thirty minutes of people walking into and over my stroller, backing up and falling over it, kicking it, kicking me, tripping over it and then staring as if the blasted thing just appeared out of nowhere.

It gets old, fast.

I try to minimize my stroller use, and to make it unobtrusive when I do use it (which, in hindsight, might be part of the problem). But I have back problems, so if I'm going to be out anywhere longer than about twenty minutes--and who's ever in the mall for only 20 minutes?--I need to have a stroller for my youngest.

We went to the Stock Show this February, which of course is one of the more crowded things in San Antonio, & had the elder two in harnesses (yes, I leash my children) and the youngest in the stroller. People do NOT look where they're going under the best of conditions, & I guess after a few rounds in the beer tent (no, we didn't go near it) they get kinda dazzled by the cheap cowboy hats. We went into the big exhibit hall that has most of the commercial booths in it...very, very wide aisles, easily large enough for six or eight people to walk abreast. I literally had people walk backwards and fall over the stroller two or three times. It's like it never occurred to them that perhaps one of the literally hundreds of people in the same building might be behind them.

So yeah, after a while I did get heartily tired of trying to yank my stroller out of the way, and eventually I started catching a few ankles. And was happy to, because I am not a creature of goodness and light at the best of times.

For the record, I don't have a particularly large stroller, either. It's not as small as an umbrella stroller, but it's a 3-wheeler that was bought because it is very maneuverable. I used a double stroller for a while with my first two, a front/back model no wider than a normal stroller, and I still had people falling over it. Loaded down with two kids and a purse, that sucker pushed 100lbs. If I'd ever decided to go kamikaze with that sucker, I could have done some damage.

The moral of the story is this: Look to your own damn self first. Chances are you're the one who tripped over that "battering ram" because you just weren't paying attention.