Am I Really A Stroller-Monger? By David Leonhardt 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 driveway to make room in 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 room. "And just what is a stroller monger."
I resisted 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 car seat," she said, pressing down first finger. "We snap it into stroller base whenever we go anywhere."
"OK, that's one."
"Then there is 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 entrance area, blocking our path to kitchen and any hope of escaping if place caught fire. The SUV is Hummer of strollers.
"OK, that is a stroller, I will grant you. But that's just two."
"We also have 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 old fold-up stroller we kept as a backup. That makes four."
"You can't count duplicates. That's double counting."