Huge Strollers
Baby carriages have become gargantuan, and their drivers ever more ferocious. Paralleling the rise of the SUV, strollers have ballooned to the size of armored tanks. They resemble covered wagons, with a family's every possession loaded aboard, as if they might set off on the Oregon Trail after going to the supermarket.
These wheeled, apocalyptic monsters have the same effect on the people who push them as super-sized SUVs have on their drivers: The bigger you are, the more you own the road. And the sidewalk. And the subway.
On the sidewalk, huge strollers don't present much of a problem, even though they often force pedestrians into the street to face oncoming traffic. They're far more troublesome in enclosed places like the subway, where the wielders of the superprams shove, stab and bump their neighbors, creating ugly standoffs with would-be pedestrian victims.
The other day, I watched as a subway rider refused to give up ground to let a megapram by, leaving his backpack on the floor of the train. The bag was snatched into the hungry wheels of the beast and mangled. At one stop, I was body-checked by a mother and daughter, each driving a double-wide stroller, with a total of four children aboard. They rumbled
onto the car in formation, one after the other,
teaming up to take on their prey. I was stunned — not just at the sight of tri-generational superstroller use, but because they had me pinned against the wall of the train.
Why have strollers grown to these frightening proportions in the first place? Babies may be getting bigger — for proof, see, any of the "Fat Babies" episodes of Jerry Springer or Maury Povich — but on average, they haven't ballooned to a degree that warrants strollers of this size. And it isn't unusual to encounter one of these monsters being pushed along without a baby onboard. Could they be a ruse, an excuse to steamroll anything and everything in the driver's way?
The bigger-is-better culture that has overtaken our society may be to blame. Sometimes referred to as "SUV strollers," these prams share many features with their namesakes: They have multiple drink holders, massive cargo space, vast headroom and satellite radio. But unlike SUVs that guzzle only gas, these are omnivores, with a particular taste for human flesh.
Their parent-drivers plow through crowds and mow down unfortunate bystanders with the zeal of Lizzie Grubman. They bust through doorways crying, "EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!" in tones both bloodthirsty and desperate.
These cries — the words deceptively polite — are a signal to duck
and cover or just run like hell. As in a head-on collision between a scooter
and a Mack truck, there will be a winner and a loser. It's clear in the stroller-pedestrian
wars just which is which.
Never having had children, I have never owned a stroller. But having been
a child, I have ridden in a stroller. It was small. Simple. Unthreatening.
You don't see strollers like that on the streets today. They would probably be unsafe. It would be like riding a tricycle on SUV-populated streets — you'd be vulnerable, leaving yourself open to total demolition. Clearly, this is a war of escalation, putting the "infant" in "infantry." No wonder people with superstrollers always seem slightly on edge, even when they're not actively engaged in a spree of brutality. It is important to keep up with the parents next door, even if that means mutually assured destruction.
— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)
— Liz Khalil (thegreatlizby@yahoo.com)
