Some people need to be shot laughed at

While walking to our OB appointment this morning (all is well with baby and mommy), we saw a man half-heartedly jogging down our street. He looked like he could've been jogging faster, but he was also pushing a side-by-side jogging stroller with only one baby in it. While yelling into his cell phone LOUD ENOUGH FOR US TO HEAR HIM HALF A BLOCK AWAY.

Poor kid would've been better off being babysat by the TV.

Once at the OB's office, we were sitting in the waiting area. I should note the waiting room is quite small -- 7 or 8 chairs, a tableful of magazines and not a lot of manuvering space around any of them. During our wait, a woman brings in her toddler in a stroller. The woman had clearly been to this office before and the kid was quite old enough to stand and walk, although not like the huge 4-year-olds we sometimes see folded in half and stuffed into an umbrella stroller because they've got their valets (mommy and daddy) trained so well.

Despite this situation that clearly called for leaving her stroller on the porch and walking the child into the waiting room, the woman still thought it was a good idea to heft the stroller up through multiple doors and a tall step (the office is in an old house), then try to muscle the stroller around the waiting area, bumping the magazine table and chairs multiple times along the way. She might have had an easier time if he other hand wasn't involved with steadying her colossal diaper bag, which had probably just barely fit into the back of her SUV.

My first instinct was "I should help her through the door." Then the smarter, less chivalrous part of my brain took over and said, "But I shouldn't enable the stupid and self-absorbed in perpetuating their behavior." If someone enjoys making their own life more difficult, who am I to stop them?

Luckily for everyone who wanted to get out of the office sometime that morning without climbing over the baby, another patient gave the stroller lady a seat away from the rest of the room, with just enough space next to it to park the stroller. That parking spot also prevented anyone from getting within 3 feet of the pass-through window to talk to the receptionist, but that was OK; we all knew who the most important person in the room was.

Within a few seconds, the baby starts getting a little antsy; just some shaking her head, swinging her legs. I would too, if I'd just recently figured out the walking thing but some unbearable hag had imprisoned me in a stroller. Her mother responds by unbuckling the poor girl's stroller restraint, removing her jacket with a comment about how she had to be getting hot...and then buckling her back into the (immobile, not going anywhere) stroller. I guess mommy didn't want her baby messing up her UGG boots by actually standing or walking in them.

As a good friend was telling me last night -- "More and more I don't want to leave the house. People are just that stupid."