So, like, I’ve got this kid, right? She’s fourteen. It gets pretty hairy around here sometimes, but since I’ve only got four years to go until she’s a legal adult, I figure I can tough it out. Plus, it turns out she can be pretty rad sometimes.
When she was two years old, we lived in Sudbury. I was a college student and we were living on my (appallingly insufficient) student loans. We became expert thrift store shoppers, and found all sorts of gems. Including an antique pram similar to this one. This poor pram. I can’t believe what I did to it.
Looking back on that pram, I figure it might have been an antique, and worth a lot of money. When we rescued it from the local Sally Ann, it was in pristine condition – no rust, no noise, it even had its original satin padding. Beautiful. So, what did I do with this pram? I shoved my too-big baby in it and tromped all over the Greater Sudbury Area, mostly in the wintertime, through snow and slush and salt and grime, and all other kinds of nastiness. I loaded groceries in it. I used it to carry home cases of beer and baskets of clean clothes from the laundromat. We even brought a kitten home in it (that kitten is now a beloved, if geriatric, member of our family). By the time we moved down south, it was trash. We left it behind, of course, but I’ve always regretted being the root cause of that beautiful pram’s ultimate demise.
This morning, I got to thinking… wouldn’t it be nice to have one of those antique prams again, beautifully restored? And wouldn’t it be nice to have a cute, chubby little baby to put in it, with a long flowing white gown and a silver baby rattle?
Of course, to make this fantasy even the slightest bit plausible, we’d have to include the other things that typically accompany antique babies – wetnurses, nannies, governesses, and entire wings of gothic Victorian mansions where said babies are kept out of sight and out of mind until they’re of an age to join their father in business or be married off to some middle-aged widower.
Maybe they can come out once in a while to say goodnight or perform a little play for dinner guests. They’d better be REALLY cute though.
*EDIT*
Just want to make it known that I am not suffering from Baby Fever. I don’t even like babies. Nope, no more babies for me – I received my Baby Fever immunization shot already – it was given to me immediately after the birth of my daughter fourteen years ago. There’s no chance of that at all. I just mostly want the pram, not the baby. I could put other shit in it.
I’m just viewing the world through sepia-tinted glasses I guess.
