I’ve long since promoted the idea that we need another term for “pram” and after years of thinking about it, I’ve decided on a term that isn’t very original but is quite accurate.
Lazinessmobile (Laziness vehicle?)
Whichever floats your boat – feedback is welcomed.
A few days ago, another childfree friend and I decided to go out for lunch and for some unknown reason, she decided to bring along an old friend that we haven’t spoken to in a long time ever since this friend decided to turn in a bat shit insane anti-vaccination promoting, morally superior stay at home mum. I decided to stop contacting her after she felt she could spend all our time together bitching about her relationship with her husband but told me that she didn’t want to hear about my relationship with my partner as listening to someone talk about a lesbian relationship weirded her out. For the sake of this anecdote, ex-friend will now be referred to as “High and Mighty Arsehat” or HAMA.
My friend cited reasons such as “She’s been whinging a lot lately about how she has doesn’t go out much” and “She just seems lonely because her husband is a jerk” and “She says it’s hard being a mum, I wanted to show her some fun”, as her justifications as to why she brought along HAMA. I called bullshit as HAMA doesn’t speak to anyone apart from when she needs a baby sitter and reportedly doesn’t do anything but post on facebook all day about how hard it is to parent a 3 year old and how bored she is while little what-his-name sits in the bath and attempts not to drown from neglect. She also spends all day bitching about the people who will refute her anti-vaccination claims and how childfree people are selfish because they get to have everything that she doesn’t. My friend has obviously gotten soft and/or suffered an acquired brain injury that has temporary given her amnesia to all of HAMA’s bullcrap. I suspect she’s secretly a masochist without all the fun stuff like the pain or sex.
Safe to say that lunch wasn’t going to be a fun affair.
It started off okay, with a few obligatory niceties such as “Does your kid still look like a ham?”, “Is your husband a productive member of society yet?” and “It sure is hot today!”, reminding myself to stay well away from open questions, and by open questions I mean questions that will leave the door open for 3 hours of HAMA bitching about her life and blaming others for her stupid choices.
Lunch was proceeding nicely, the food was good as always – we went to our local café which was nice. I realised early on that no matter what you do with a HAMA mummy, they always have something to complain about. Go to a café for lunch to get them out of the house? Too expensive, unlike childfree people they have extra bills because they have children! So why couldn’t we find something cheaper because they’re broke and children don’t like cafes. Let’s go to a park and bring some homemade food then? Nooo, can’t do that. Don’t you know that parks can have dogs and if I have to bring the child, child might get bitten?
I’m digressing.
Lunch was bearable as long as you don’t bring up anything child related which apparently HAMA can’t do – of the millions of topics and current affairs in the world, the kid or kid related things are always the topic of discussion. Everything can be traced back to the kid or how parenthood is hard.
“Seen any good movies? Pacific Rim was awesome (true), the Wolverine kicked butt (also true), Despicable Me 2 was fabulous (complete understatement, it was brillant)”
“No, we haven’t got any money because (the kid) has been sick and we’ve got no money for a sitter — adfadfaslgfakgjadkf”
I stopped listening at that point, until this happened:
“It took us so long to get a park! All the pram parking areas were full and we couldn’t park in the disabled car parks – it’s so stupid, why do they even have them? It’s not like disabled people can drive, they can just park wherever. At least pram parking is closer to the centre doors. We need more pram parking areas so mums don’t have to walk as far”
*eye twitch*
Fucking excuse me?
Forgetting the moment that I have a blind mother with a degenerative back disease and a father who has not only two less than working knees and various other muscles issues (he can drive fine but not walk long distances), forgetting the disabled parking is a federal requirement for shopping centres in Australia and pram parking is only a curtsey – why the fuck should mothers get pram parking closer to the shopping centres doors than disabled people? People with disabilities who have been accepted for government issued disabled parking permits have them because they have disabilities that require them to be closer to the shopping centres doors.
In fact to be eligable for a disabled parking permit within my home state, a person must fit at least one of the criteria:
To apply for an ADPP, the applicant must be a Queensland resident and meet 1 of the following eligibility criteria:
- must be unable to walk and always require the use of a wheelchair
- their ability to walk is severely restricted by a permanent medical condition or disability
- their ability to walk is severely restricted by a temporary medical condition or disability.
A temporary medical condition or disability must be of at least 6 months duration, as certified by a doctor or occupational therapist.
Which unlike pram parking, a person with a disabled parking permit must either be in a wheelchair fulltime or temporarily or have a permenant medical condition that renders them severaly restricted in their walking abilities.
Unless you are a mum with a pram with one of the above conditions, I would assume that you can walk just fine. Granted pregnancy takes a toll on the body and pregnant women have difficulty walking but we’re not talking about pregnant women. We’re talking about women who have had the kid and can walk just fine, free of any medical conditions that renders them unable to walk long distances.
This leads me to come to the conclusion that some parents want pram parking so they can arm themselves with their pram-tanks so they can have another reason to be lazy. Not only have they made the choice to not abort the pregnancy but they’ve made the choice to not adopt the child out therefore making the choice to keep the child. People with disabilities don’t choose their disability so why do parents get curtesy parking, often closer than the disabled parking spaces in shopping centers?
I’ve seen some of those pram-tanks, they’re fucking huge and painful when someone runs over your foot with them. You can lean on them for support if you need to.
Obvioulsy not all parents are like this but parents like the HAMA ex-friend of mine scream self-important mummy martyrs. They feel they need everything given to them on a silver platter because they flatbacked their way to unexpected parenthood. Parents like my ex-friend give every other parent who actually has a brain and who don’t use their parenthood as a way to get everything given to them, a bad name.
At least the tea was good.
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