My latest diatribe today is about prams and shopping, the two don't mix and who ever thought it was a motherly duty relished by the female species are seriously deluded. The novelty of taking the child out to show them off to all and sundry for the first couple of weeks is the exception of course... therein after it's all down hill.
This doesn't imply I hate taking my child out in his pram quite the opposite but it's the people I meet along the way that crack me up. I go out for a simple list of things and end up returning home with half of what I intended to get or worst case scenario (it has happened on occasion) empty handed!
Firstly I hate the way dodgy looking old people or scruffy tramps shove their tabacco stained fingers my child's mouth claiming 'what a beautiful baby'. Why oh why do they do that? Do they not realise they might be carrying a infectious disease? Okay a little dramatic but from the look of some of them you wouldn't touch them with a barge pole. I get all sorts of images racing through my mind like they've been rummaging around in people's wheelie bins. I try an avoid these types of people at all costs but somehow they manage to find me EVERYTIME.
Secondly when your in an aisle and you see someone approaching you from the other end, I always move the pram out the way to let them past but for some god unknown reason said person has moved the same way and expects you to move again and look at you as if your the problem. Trivial as this may sound it is the most annoying thing on the planet and you don't even realise your head has suddenly taken on a look of a demented goblin and it's at this point I leave the shop seething and bearing no wares.
It can be frustrating from the other side too. Picture the scene; a footpath bounded by bollards dissecting a supermarket car park. When cars are parked either side, the pavement is plenty wide enough for three people to pass. Otherwise, of course, there's no such restriction. So why, oh why, do I always seem to end up passing someone with a pram who chooses the one point along the path where there are cars either side to stop, step sideways to the pram, and fiddle about with something on it? (Instead of doing so where there are no cars blocking both sides?)
Needless to say, it seems to be a supermarket phenomenon rather than a pram one, since you can substitute for pram a shopping trolley and pavement, shopping isle.
I guess my bugbear is supermarkets!