Strollers. Suck.

Here’s why: Some freak decided strollers should mirror the pre-gas crisis SUV’s (the really, really big ones), and loaded up strollers with all sorts of extras. Extras no rational human should ever need. For example, no stroller should need four cup holders, a GPS system, off road wheels, airbags, and a compass. If you find yourself seriously contemplating these stroller options, let me remind you that you have an INFANT. Infants should not be hauled via stroller into the tundra. Remember Meryl Streep’s plaintive cry, “The dingo ate my baby!” She probably had a tripped out stroller, and look what happened to her.

The problem with these stroller extras is that they add weight and bulk. For someone who is…muscularly challenged, shall we say (I’m a wimp. I can admit it. Don’t judge me.)…these pimped out strollers are beyond one’s ability to maneuver into and out of a vehicle. Okay, one CAN get these beasts in and out of a car, but moving them usually results in pain to some area of the body. Bruises, broken nails, smashed shins are the norm.

Why do we keep using these monstrosities? Simple. We don’t know any better when we are with child and register for strollers similar to what our friends have. Our “friends” don’t mention that their Peg Perego, Evenflow, or Graco weighs a thousand pounds because they don’t want to be the only parent suffering from bruises, broken nails, and smashed shins. (Misery loves company.) Once we are the owners of these heavy, hulking masses of reinforced steel, off road tires, and all-weather nylon, we are too embarrassed to tell the giver of the expensive stroller that their generous gift is impractical for hauling around an infant weighing approximately six pounds. Further, as parents we associate bigger and accessory-laden with safer. We want our children to be safe, so we try to buy the stroller equivalent of the Pope’s bubble car without considering the fact that we rarely, if ever, stroll with our infants through dangerous areas—and if we did, heavy strollers would just slow us down and make us easy targets.

Fact: sleep deprived new mothers rarely do anything more than go to the grocery store. You can find these baggy-eyed wraiths haunting the diaper aisle, barely conscious, virtually asleep on their feet. Even if luck and genetics is on the mother’s side and she ends up bouncing back from her delivery with barely a hiccup to find that her infant sleeps through the night starting the very first week (which is probably what happens to Angelina Jolie because she gets everything else…not that I’m bitter), it will be rare that she takes her tiny bundle of DNA on more than a slow saunter around the zoo. Tripped out strollers, even at the zoo, are not necessary. First, most zoos even rent special strollers on site. Second, in the event of an escaped tiger, a bulky stroller would simulate a wounded gazelle, and then where will you be? Right back to “the dingo ate my baby,” that’s where. Clearly, big strollers are liabilities on all fronts.

I struggled with my gargantuan Range Rover of strollers through two children. Then, last week, I lost it. Not the stroller, my patience. I’d received one bruise too many and had an apoplectic fit in the parking lot of Target. That’s when I stalked into Target and bought a cheap-o umbrella stroller. No frills. Just a seat. Weighs about 3 pounds. I could bench press this thing using just my pinkies. Hands down, this is the best sixteen dollar purchase ever.

If you ever hear of a dingo escaped from a zoo located in a dangerous area, that woman with the small stroller running in front of all the bulky stroller moms? That’s me.