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Am I Really A Stroller-Monger?
By
David Leonhardt
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I was reading "A Modern
Infant Armada", a humor column in Maclean's Magazine
written by a fellow humor columnist. Writing about it now
is a bit like a painter painting another painter or a
singer singing about another singer (but it not like a
cook cooking another cook.).
David Russell (yes, another humor columnist named David)
laughs at his neighbor for parking both cars in the
driveway to make room in the garage for four strollers for
just one child. I laughed with him. Four strollers for
just one baby is ridiculous, right?
However, David Russell becomes a parent himself, a
condition that afflicts many unsuspecting homo sapiens,
and he concludes that a call to his neighbor is warranted:
"I need to see if he can help me get a fleet
rate."
"Traitor!" I cried out. "Stroller
monger!"
"Who's a traitor?" my wife asked as she walked
in the room. "And just what is a stroller
monger."
I resisted the obvious answer – that a stroller monger
is somebody who mongs strollers. "David Russell. He
says that one stroller is enough for any child, but then
he decides to buy an entire fleet."
"Say, we could have saved a bundle if we had applied
for a fleet rate," my wife mused.
"What? We don't have four strollers."
My wife smiled. It was a sweet smile you could just fall
in love with...if you did not know that it meant, "Oh
yes we do!"
"We do not."
"My wife took out her counting fingers. "First
there is the car seat," she said, pressing down the
first finger. "We snap it into the stroller base
whenever we go anywhere."
"OK, that's one."
"Then there is the SUV," she said, pressing down
on a second finger. The "SUV" is a full sized
stroller. We bought it when we were still squeezing it on
a downtown apartment. With no storage space, it stood in
the entrance area, blocking our path to the kitchen and
any hope of escaping if the place caught fire. The SUV is
the Hummer of strollers.
"OK, that is a stroller, I will grant you. But that's
just two."
"We also have the fold-up stroller," my wife
said, pressing down a third finger.
"But she's not even using it yet."
"She will soon and we have it now," my wife
pointed out. "Then there is the old fold-up stroller
we kept as a backup. That makes four."
"You can't count duplicates. That's double
counting."
"It takes double the space," my wife insisted.
"We have four strollers.
I stared in silence. Slowly it sunk in. Yes, there were
two Davids who were humor columnists, but there were also
two Davids who were stroller-mongers.
Uh-oh. My wife was smiling again. She was watched for just
the right moment to strike. "Our baby has more seats
in this house than anybody else has."
"That's ridiculous." No sooner had the words
left my mouth than I remembered the boomerang rule. Words
like ridiculous, ludicrous, silly, stupid and big mouth
usually apply only to the person who speaks them.
My wife rhymed off our seats, "Three on the couch,
two chairs in the living room, six in the kitchen, one in
the bathroom and one at each of our desks. Plus the three
red chairs Little Lady has in the living room. That makes
17."
"Ha!" I knew it couldn't be true.
Then came that deadly sweet smile again, the smile that
said, "Take my hand while I lead you around the house
to see why you should think first and shout 'Aha!'
later."
In the kitchen stood the high chair and the sit-in play
saucer. In her office sat the rocking chair that never
rocked and the bouncy chair that never bounced. There was
the swing seat, and there were two cushion seats for
sitting upright on the floor. She opened the door to the
enclosed porch, and there were the four strollers and the
car seat she would soon be using.
"That makes 12," my wife tallied. "We each
have fewer than six."
I thought really hard. "Aha!" I said again,
proudly pointing out that this time I had thought first
and shouted 'Aha!' later.. "We have three chairs on
the balcony, and six on the patio. There are also six
folding chairs for the fire pit."
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there was
no reason to forget all the outdoors furniture at a time
like this. Unfortunately, there was no reason to forget
arithmetic, either. Our baby still had the most seats in
the house – and outside the house, too.
"Uh, do toilet seats count?"
My wife smiled her sweet smile again, a smile that could
only mean, "So, stroller monger, what do you have to
say for yourself now?"
I knew that another humor columnist named David had just
been labeled a traitor. Meekly, I mumbled. "Lawn
tractor seat?"
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