Baby Got Back Support
I tell ya, babies and toddlers have it so easy these days. Have you seen the baby strollers of today? They have got to be monstrosities dreamt up by Cadillac fanatics!
I remember back when I was a kid, “luxury travel” came in the form of a rickety frame upon which a piece of cloth was suspended so that our tiny bottoms would just sink in and we would dangle pretty much helplessly. It was not unlike falling backwards and getting stuck in the toilet during potty training – except we’d have tiny shopping cart wheels underneath to keep us trundling along.
A typical "primitive" baby stroller of my childhood days
(Image courtesy of: MoMA.org)
Nowadays, I can’t help gaping at all the strollers that are hauled around. I guess the manufacturers finally realized how uncomfortable it is to sit on a piece of cloth because the strollers now have actual molded seats with plump cushioning to give full support to babies’ backs. The wheels themselves are more accurately described as tires and they come along complete with sturdy, heavy-duty suspension systems. And they’re huge! Even when they are in their collapsed forms, the strollers of today utterly dwarf the fully expanded forms of the strollers in my day. These babies can probably crush their delicate parent models like a monster truck with only a slight hint of a bump.
A typical modern baby stroller monster of today
(Image courtesy of: JakeandJo)
I haven’t even gotten into the luxuries on these strollers. It is now standard for retractable awnings to be installed. I have seen some strollers where the awnings have transparent screens that can be fastened down so that the babies can be completely protected from the elements.
Back in my day, we were totally exposed to whatever the weather happened to be. Oh, our parents would have an umbrella opened up above us of course, but if a few raindrops got through to splatter us in the face or if a few rays of sunlight slanted past the shade to hit us in the eyes – well, tough luck. Just suck it up, baby.
There are some stroller models now that even have their own built-in entertainment systems. That’s right, babies no longer need to gaze around aimlessly while they are being wheeled back and forth. They can listen to jolly tunes by pressing various buttons on toys (educational ones, of course) built into their nifty front tray, which – naturally – also has a convenient holder for their sippy cups.
Needless to say, we were not privy to such fancy features when we were riding in our strollers. Our entertainment during our stroller excursions was – oh, this is going to sound so primitive – the general scenery around us. You know…the trees, the flowers, the little birdies, the clouds – my personal favourite was the clouds because they stimulated my overgrown imagination. We had to cradle our sippy cups in our own arms and when we got tired, we had to drop them on our laps because we didn’t have a handy cup holder in front of us. Yeah, fancy that, eh?
I wonder what strollers will be like in the future when these babies grow up and have babies of their own. The tires would probably be obsolete then. Instead, the strollers would cruise on a cushion of air like hovercrafts – or maybe even be lifted by anti-gravity repulsors. Babies would be enclosed in hermetically-sealed titanium shells where they’ll have a full array of holographic displays to keep them perpetually entertained. And they wouldn’t have need of a cup holder – a little tube would just descend from the ceiling of the shell for them to suck on whenever the onboard computer system detects that they are thirsty.
As you may have already noticed, I am slightly jealous of babies these days – and they’ll most likely feel the same way about their own babies in the future. However, I am still quite proud of my childhood era. The lack of these fancy features had made us that much tougher (at least I like to imagine so, anyway).
Plus, we grew up in a time when Pluto was still known as a planet. How can we not take pride in that? There is even an entire Facebook group (several variations, actually) dedicated to shouting out to the world exactly how proud we are of that fact. And as we all know, Facebook is the authority on everything.
Hah – beat that, babies of today and tomorrow!
