Return to the Maple Syrup Festival

[james_davis_nicoll]

Or rather the stroller issue.

One of the most aggressively wielded strollers was empty. A number of FoFs encountered that woman and her giant, empty stroller during the Festival and at no point did it have kids in it. If I recall correctly (because I meant to post about this a while ago but forgot) there were also some other mysteriously childless strollers being plowed through crowds.

Hmmmm.

Just a fluke that several women got stuck handling strollers after they left their kids somewhere for a perfectly good reason that precluded leaving the stroller or were they actually using empty strollers as a tool to force their way through crowds? If the latter, has this method spread or is it peculiar to this region?

Comments

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

My children now being 19 and 13, and my not being a car person, I use my big old jogging stroller for hauling groceries, garage-sale furniture, etc. It has big bicycle wheels and is very easy to push over all sorts of terrains, and there have definitely been times when I would take it to an event to carry coats, towels, toys, snacks, drinks, books, camera, whatever.

I get really angry

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

at people who use strollers in extremely tight quarters, like festivals and sales. My favorite sale, the Pembroke Day School Clothsline Sale, insists that strollers must be parked outside. BUT they allow people to bring in the two-wheel shopping carts...which are just as annoying.

I do recall one craft sale that the planners were stupid, they did it at a school and the pathway between the vendor tables were basically two human behinds wide. They didn't put a ban on strollers and thus had massive people jams.

The strollers held children, though.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

If someone used an empty stroller to try to plough through in front of me, I think I'd be less careful about not falling onto it. I doubt the pram would recover.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Perhaps she has a child, who is invisible?

[daev.livejournal.com]

This sounds like the setup to a spy movie. Can you be sure they weren't swarthy Russian agents in bad wigs, using empty strollers to smuggle secret plans to each other?

[casaubon.livejournal.com]

I really don't understand this kind of behaviour. Strollers makes it harder to get through a crowd, not easier.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

were they actually using empty strollers as a tool to force their way through crowds?

Aw, hell, no. It's *way* faster to slip through a crowd on your own than to get through it pushing a stroller.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Their children were of an age to be able to walk for short periods, but not long ones, so they had to bring a stroller to the event. At the time you saw them, the kids were walking somewhere with their fathers. The mothers couldn't ditch the strollers anywhere because strollers are expensive, and they would be stolen.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'd say that's a likely scenario.

Now that our child is walking, we switched from a folding but relatively bulky stroller to a lightweight umbrella-style one that folds up small enough to sling over a shoulder; it helps with this kind of thing. Some of them are even relatively cheap, though the best ones aren't.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Doesn't make sense. If it is crowded enough to require 'forcing' the stroller through... Then it's too crowded to allow kids that small to walk. If Dad is walking them, it's outside or on the mezzanine or someplace else less crowded than where the stroller wielder is. Why doesn't he have the stroller?

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Derek, Rivka has a three-year-old. Do you?

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah, the same ol' nonsense - I can't possibly ask a simple question because I don't have kids.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

That wasn't a simple question. That was telling her she didn't make sense, and she's the one with the kid. I don't have kids, either, but I do read her LJ, and I think she probably has a better idea about this than you do.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

You can't get much simpler than "why wasn't the stroller with Dad?". Doubly so since Dad is the once accompanying the kids likely to get tired and need the stroller.

In other words, no it doesn't make sense. If she has a better idea, then she can explain it.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

This is actually one reason I elected not to have kids. From what I've seen, at that age you can keep hold of a) one (or more) squirmy toddler(s) or b) the stroller. It is not physically possible to control both unless you are a highly-trained octopus.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That's true in my experience. Or, as Samantha points out, Dad could be taking his son to the porta-potty.

[casaubon.livejournal.com]

Sometimes toddlers don't like being in their stroller, especially if it's crowded. So you pick them up and carry them to stop the screaming.

Though personally I'd leave the stroller somewhere, unless I was actually leaving. I've never had one stolen, or heard of anyone having one stolen.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

True. But not connected at all to my point/question.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

It's easy to screw up the planning for these things; the crowd density may have been unanticipated, or could vary across the event area. Planning outings with small children is a lot like planning for battle; no plan survives initial contact with the enemy.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Though I should say I'd never take a stroller to something like, say, the Deerfield Fair in NH. The last time we were there, we carried the baby in a frame-pack-style backpack carrier, but that only works up to a certain size.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The festival is fairly consistant, at least in recent years when I started going again [1]. There's a long line of booths selling stuff down the center of the street, a nearly impenetrable flow of people near the booths and a lower density out at the edges, by the shops. People who are waiting for other people hang out at the edges and people who are trying to shop are somewhere towards the center.

1: My memories of it from the 1960s suggest that it was very different back then or maybe we went to a different one.