Baby On Board

June 11th 2006

What is the point of those Baby On Board stickers that clutter up the back windows of so many cars. Does the owner of the car expect you to stop them and ask for a look at their darling little pride and joy?

“Why have you stopped me?“

“Well I’d like a look at your baby of course.”

“ Look at my baby? Why?”

“Well why else would you be advertising the fact that that you’re carrying your baby in your car?”

Maybe it isn’t that. Maybe the stickers are designed to influence the judgement of the driver in the car behind as to whether or not he should crash into the car in front?


“Oh look Ethel, I see there’s a Baby on Board sticker on the car in front, I was about to plough into the back of it but now I’ve been warned there’s a baby on board I’m going to take avoiding action.”

A noble thought perhaps, but a realistic proposition? I don’t think so; for surely anyone about to plough into the back of a car would already have taken all the avoiding action they can, whether the car is in front is sporting a Baby on Board sticker on the rear window or not. So that isn’t the point of them then.

When I first saw a Baby on Board sticker I thought it had perhaps been put there to warn the driver of the car behind not to get too close, as in addition to any other people who might be on board there was also a baby, so be ultra careful. But I soon dismissed that theory, common sense telling me that if you are near enough to a car to read the Baby on Board sticker you are already nearer to it than safe braking distance will allow, even at only thirty miles-an-hour.

Women being the way they are, one might consider a Baby on Board sticker to be more likely to cause an accident than to prevent one, for what woman does not like to look at a baby? And that being so what then are the chances of a woman driver, on observing that the car in front is displaying a Baby on Board sticker, and in her eagerness to see the baby, getting too close to it and crashing into the back of it? I don’t think BetFred would give you very generous odds against it happening.

“You’re driving too close to that car in front, Ethel.”

“But I want to see the baby.”

CRASH!!

 “I think that’s it there, the one with the busted head and the rattle.”

After much thought I’ve reached the conclusion that it must be some sort of announcement – the proud mother proclaiming to the world that she has had a baby; but at this moment she isn’t out with it proudly showing it to her friends, pushing it around in its trendy three-wheeler pram or slung to her front like some tiny mountaineer trying to scale the twin peaks of Mount Tits , but hidden away in a car where her new pride and joy can’t be seen and admired by anybody. So she has to tell everyone. BABY ON BOARD!

I once saw a sticker in a back window, obviously put there by a mother-to-be who couldn’t wait any longer to tell the world about her good news, that read Foetus On Board. Perhaps it was a joke. But perhaps Baby on Board stickers are a joke too, because they certainly don’t make any sense. Now Stupid Pillock on Board….... 

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Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

3 thoughts on “Baby On Board”

  3. Maybe they secretly regret having the kid and are inviting people to plow into the back of the car and thus take the problem off their hands. 🙂

    What, no comments from women?

    Well, here’s one.

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