Don't shoot me, I'm just the pram driver
"Good afternoon, sir," said the policeman as he ran his eagle eye over the four-wheeled vehicle in my possession. "Does this, er, um, conveyance belong to you?"
"No, of course it does not belong to me," I snapped back. "Do I look like I belong in a pram!"
Wrong response. I am sure we have all, at some in our lives, said something really stupid without thinking, and then wished we hadn’t.
I consider myself very lucky that the encounter with the policeman was just part of a nightmare. I woke up in a cold sweat, however, firm in my believe that I had just been given an infringement notice for four bald pram tyres and a summons to appear before a local hanging judge.
My wife Katherine cannot understand why I am now sometimes uncomfortable when I have to pick up our son Jack, 2, from child care.
Katherine normally takes Jack to child care in the mornings and I pick him up in the afternoons.
Since the centre is only a 20-minute walk from home, Katherine takes him in his pram which she leaves at the centre for me to wheel him home in again. This is a fine arrangement when the weather is good all day. When the weather is miserable all day, we transport Jack in the car both ways. Problems arise, however, on those days when the weather is miserable in the morning and lovely in the afternoon.
On those days, I invariably find that I have to wheel an empty pram to child care to pick up Jack.
Near to home is not so traumatic but as I approach the centre, I pass through a major shopping centre and, I could be a little paranoid here, a lot of very judgmental people.
"No wonder I have nightmares," I told Katherine the other day.
"People see me wheeling an empty pram and think I’m either crackers or a pram thief.
"It’s different for a woman. If people see you wheeling an empty pram, they probably think you’re going to pick your child up form child care. When they see me driving an empty pram, they wonder what horrid thing I’ve done to the former little occupant.
"Honestly, I feel like a criminal. Between watching out for angry, crusading little old ladies with dangerous umbrellas and whirring, flashing police sirens in the real-view mirror, I am a nervous wreck."
I had a new experience yesterday. A man stopped me, grabbed my elbow with great compassion, looked down at the vacant pram and asked: "Has there been an accident?"
In fairness to Katherine, she did spare me embarrassment a couple of weeks ago.
She told me that she had taken the pram down to the child-care centre in the car, and left it there for me.
She was mistaken.
In fact, she left the pram in the car. Seeing as I walked down to child care - and left the car home - she might has well have left it on Mars.
It was a tiring, tedious return journey.
I am sure the people at the shopping centre are still talking about the childless pram-driver who was transformed into a pram-less child driver that afternoon.
First published in The Advocate, Burnie
©June 20, 1998 John Martin. All Rights Reserved
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Australian writer John Martin looks at the funny side of parenting in My Son Jack
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