When the term “stroller-pusher” becomes a derogatory label
When Stroller-pusher is used as a snide reference, it’s usually directed at some self-righteous adult pushing not just a stroller, but a holy-stroller, a classist war-wagon, if you will.
I also call it steering a child-hero or driving a trophy-trolley, (too often while forcing a 10th-grade wardrobe to conform to a 10th-grade-was-a-long-time-ago body). Certain Stroller-pushers have a pious air of expectation. Some Stoller-pushers rove in gangs, flying yoga colors, and they’re impatient, entitled, and predominantly white. Stroller-pushers believe it’s their privilege in life to express themselves, yet they demand the sanctity of their own comfort zones and short circuit like malfuctioning toasters when challenged. The woman in this cell phone footage (we’ll call her “Bananas”) exemplifies what happens when a self-important crybaby’s low tolerance for difficulty collides with not getting what she wants. She exemplifies a lack of patience and bearing.
Rather than get out and move a shopping cart, stroller-pushers like Bananas will use the front bumpers of their Priuses to nudge grocery carts out of their way – even into someone else’s car door. I’ve watched ’em. Rather than pull to the side of the road post-fender-bender, stroller-pushers hold up traffic in the middle of the highway to await law enforcement acknowledgement and service. Stroller-pushers like Bananas are vain and prone to meltdowns, extreme social hypocrisy, and door-lock profiling. Don’t agree? How much you wanna bet this one makes speeches about the importance of choosing your battles wisely? (Hello? Facepunch!) Stroller-pushers are sanctimonious, hourly victims-of-something or someone – in this case, Apple, Inc.
For many, the best days of their lives revolved around the band U2. Bananas doesn’t like Florence and The Machine, but she’ll claim otherwise as needed. They’re tramp-stamp hiders, Apatow lovers, Botox addicts, and Whole Foods shoppers; they’re stupid-baby-namers and self-righteous blamers. They use their brats’ faces as their Facebook profile pics not ‘cause they’re exploding with my-kid-is-better-than-you-dirty-commoners pride, but because they can’t get over their own blithering photographic self hate. (But no, you bitchy, bat-winged pterodactyl, shopping at Forever 21 doesn’t actually make you 21.) The ones with personalities scarred by feelings of powerlessness do their grocery cart nudging from behind the wheels of $63,000 jungle-crawler SUVs.
Encountering the Bananas-type in public, especially when they loose their fragile grasp on reality, inspires in me a long sad sigh for America’s already ethically challenged, racism-denying future. Is it too much to hope that our truest heroes can be those for whom civility, composure, courtesy, and stability aren’t a struggle? I can just hear it now: “Jeeze! You make manners look easy!”
Contrary to a popular resentment-myth, today’s Apple products aren’t designed to achieve your goals for you. They’re designed to make learning curves less boring and more compact. (I taught myself iMovie in fifteen minutes because of a deadline, and now I use it for fun.) Likewise, Apple stores aren’t around to do your thinking for you; they’re there to get you to spend your money.
If you walk into a store as unprepared as Bananas was, the name for you is “easy mark.” The quickest way to make a profit is by selling convenience to the lazy and exclusivity to the affluent; Apple does both very well. It’s up to you, the customer, to have the social skills, patience, courtesy, and willingness to help yourself when you walk through their door. I’ll bet Bananas spent more money than she had to solely because she was blind with narcissism. (And beating on the kid’s ride like that! Damn. Then again, the kid is probably walkin’ around the store because he or she is actually sixteen.)
No matter how tempting, there’s no excuse for a retail tantrum. Is your iPad picking on you? Hate the Apple store? Too bad. Learn to navigate it and learn to social engineer the employees to get what you need. Work it; don’t yell it at, you sniveler. Maybe you do deserve what you want, but if you act like it, dumbass, you’ll just be the one who deserves what you got. Get character or become one!
I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Here, we’ve always just had pushers. Strollers were something people had in the US.
You make me more glad than I can say that your cultural references are beyond my ken, because your tone is so relentlessly negative. Ever consider what positive contribution you’re making to the world? Or would that be too sanctimonious?
Thank you for your remarks. They do make me question why you’d bother if you don’t know what I’m talking about, which by the way, isn’t regional or alternative names for baby carriages. But never mind that. Sometimes when I read someone’s snarky rant about something that’s frustrated them, I relate, I agree, and I laugh. Reading somebody else’s viewpoint can sometimes make me feel like I’m venting too, like someone has said something I’ve been feeling. It’s the “positive contribution” I was aiming for, but since I clearly didn’t deliver for you, here’s Pharrell Williams, “Happy.”