I missed National Grouch Day yesterday because I was all sweetness and light on my birthday. But I’m going to make up for it today by ranting about OC Transpo and babies. Yes, babies!
I know OC Transpo tries to be all things to all people and ends up being not enough to most of us. But jeez louise, the #14 has been overflowing with my pet peeves lately.
The #14 was late tonight as usual. When it finally arrived, it was crowded, just like it always is. There were 15 people waiting at my stop at Bank and Gladstone. We all tried to cram our way on, but the front part of the bus (the part with the sideways seats reserved for people with assorted difficulties) was jammed full of strollers and carts. It was difficult and treacherous trying to get through the stroller section to the jammed-packed, standing-room-only, vehicle-free rear section.
Why do they have the stroller section at the very front of the bus? It just creates a bottleneck and an obstacle course for everybody else, and I can’t believe the parents with the strollers like being in everybody’s way all the time.
When I had a little kid, we weren’t allowed to take strollers on the bus (except for folded umbrella strollers). Nowadays there are parents with outrageously huge super-deluxe strollers with trunks and trailers and canopies and built-in toyboxes getting on the bus. I’ve gone camping in smaller vehicles! Can’t there be some kind of limit on the size of stroller permitted on the bus?
So I navigate my way back there, and I’m standing up and feeling squished and I overhear some oversized seated woman going on about how sometimes she takes her eight-year-old brother shopping, and she uses a jumbo umbrella stroller for him. A bus driver in Hull told her to wake the child and make him walk and fold the stroller before getting on the bus. She was outraged. Outraged! Jesus. The child is EIGHT for crying out loud!
While I’m on the subject, let me just add that I saw two overgrown children in strollers this summer – one at the Lumiere Festival and one on my street – playing hand-held video games. Unless the child has a disability, he’s old enough to walk if he’s old enough to play video games. The parents are just too damned lazy to let the kid out of the stroller because then they’d have to actually parent him. It’s amazing that people that lazy actually manage to breed.
Okay, I’m done ranting about the babies and their buggies, but I’m not quite done with OC Transpo yet. About a week ago I got on the overcrowded #14 and there was a woman using the bus to MOVE. She had two cardboard boxes and six large plastic bags with her. It took her four trips to get off the bus at her stop. Part of me felt bad for her, because how awful must your life be if you have to use OC Transpo to move, but part of me just felt annoyed at her for choosing to move at rush hour.
And finally, I have a fashion tip for middle-aged men who wear maternity pants: Don’t tuck your shirt in!
What a perfect rant, Zoom! Those buggies drive me insane, too. I like the idea of kids on leashes. How come we never see that anymore? Leashes don’t take up any space at all.
My mother used a leash sometimes on us and look how we turned out! Um, the answer is, “great!” I don’t have any memories of it but there’s a home movie with one in it. When you have 3 kids in 5 years, you have to have some sort of control. And she did great. My parents only had one car and no money so I suppose they went grocery shopping together or Dad watched us while Mum went or something. I’ll have to ask – as I’ve said, I’ve blotted out the memories. A lot of the problem comes with that overblown sense of entitlement. And I say, “get over yourself!” (Not you Zoom – those other people.)
I agree with you able the buggies. If the child is old enough to walk, he/she is old enough to not be in a stroller.
As for the lady that is moving, I would probably just rent a taxi cab and bus back. Doesn’t that seem more practical?
Not to be uncharitable … well, okay, to be very highly uncharitable … I think them stroller-utes are more about obnoxious postpartum attention-grabbing “I am mommy, hear me roar!!!“) than about baby transport. Ever noticed how you can find clots of ’em blocking the least navigable areas of certain trendy coffee shops in the Glebe? And as ya trip and stumble by, the attached mommies give you amused F* U smiles?
I think the look is a variation on the F* U wave that certain drivers give you as they prepare to endanger your toes, bulldozing over your legal right-of-way at downtown crosswalks. They act all, like, this is a Thank U, little doggy-person. But it’s a F* U.
Oops. But now I digress into patented Urban Pedestrian territory…
OH Zoom, you got it with the baby buggies. I *hate* getting on buses with those buggies. I was on the 176 once, and there were 4 buggies at the front, and one in the back – it was insane. I’m surprised the driver didn’t turn at least some of them away. It’s awkward as hell walking past them at the front too – I stumbled around one giant super-deluxe thing, and the woman gave me such a dirty look. I apologized, but I felt like cussing her out for having such an unnecessarily huge stroller.
I feel embarrassed about my bitterness sometimes. Half the time it’s an obviously low-income family using the bus, and you get the feeling it’s their only option. Still, every time we approach a stop with a stroller waiting at it, I hear myself sighing “another fucking stroller…” in my head.
I’ve been lucky enough to not have to rely on OC Transpo when transporting my littlest ones, but seriously people – give the moms a break already! Certainly the idea of an eight year old in a stroller seems ludicrous – but without knowing why the kid is in a stroller, why judge?
Would you rather the mother be carrying her kid – or kids – and the usual baggage? Try toting a 20 lbs sleeping toddler, plus diaper bag, plus whatever else you happen to be on the town for, around in your arms for even 10 minutes, let alone a full excursion. Or maybe you’d rather the mother be driving around town in her gas-guzzling SUV instead of using public transportation? And if there already happen to be a stroller or two on the bus, the bus driver is supposed to just leave someone standing at the curb – with a child, no less – simply because it’s inconvenient to step around the strollers?
I think Zoom is right on the money with the observation that it’s no more fun for the parent than it is for the other people who have to take the bus. Why be so critical?
Look if you sem to have a problem with “Public” transportation
perhaps you should find other means of traveling. As for strollers on the bus how else are these people going to travel. It’s not like low income people have a choice Now i agree that there should be a size limit and those g-d jogging strollers should never be allowed as they are the size of some cars. I have an 18 month old and I use one of those small umbrella stroller’s for if I didn’t it would be unsafe for him as he doesn’t quite understand the concept of sitting yet.As I said earlier some of us have no choice.
I think the issue is with the SIZE of the buggies, not with the fact that people have them on the bus. Some of them are just too damned big to be on a bus without being an absolute nuisance and hazard to the rest of us.
Could these parents not use – as I used to, and as Buckstone still does – an umbrella stroller for all excursions that involve the bus? They could still use their Baby Hummers for strolls around the neighbourhood.
I HATE strollers on the bus! And you know I hate them as a passenger and as a mommy. They take an incredibly simple and easy thing like public transit (no carseats to wrestle into place!) and make it into a horrible nightmare. Gotta love baby slings and wraps – and I can STILL wear 3 yr old Max in a sling!
It isn’t just on buses that these huge strollers take up way more space than they should. Have you ever attempted to have coffee at one of the coffee shops during the mommies’ coffee break time? It is impossible to navigate among the toddler equvalent of SUVs.
And now for something completely different!
I’m writing this from Dumaguete in the Philippines – the motorcycle capital. Wonderful to watch the whining, entitled Ottawa horde from this gentle perch. Family of five observed today happily huddled together on one motorbike. Not a helmet in sight! Pedicabs everywhere: fare to any point in town $0.15/pp, including all your bags. NO SUV baby buggies! No FU grimaces or gestures! Universal, happy contentment. I don’t miss my buspass at all, ne’er to mention the attitude driven, skill deficient OC Transpo operators.
Maybe they are in strollers because they can’t walk yet or stand up in a moving bus????? And p.s ”leashes” are for animals