It will never cease to amaze me what kind of topics blow up on the radio. As a listener in Florida pointed out this morning via e-mail, he was tuned to a local station where everyone was yelling about guns and switched to NewsTalk 1010 where people couldn't stop talking about strollers on public transit. 

But this story is bigger than strollers. It's about the day to day troubles of living in a dense urban environment. And without going all Freud on you, it's also about how people feel about other people's lives. There's a bit of a culture clash in our society over people who have kids and those who don't. If you aren't convinced, wait for spring and see how long it takes for a fight to break out over kids and dogs in Trinity Bellwoods Park. And you can't blame it all on one side or the other. Some parents think their horrible children are adorable or that raising kids means they're making a more meaningful contribution to society. And some non-parents can be soulless jerks. 

I don't know if the stroller wars requires us to invoke Rodney King, but they point to a larger problem: as a population we don't tend to show a lot of respect for each other. We get into fights with transit workers, cut people off on the 401, ride bikes on sidewalks, and block rush hour traffic while we fetch the cleaning. Oddly enough this rudeness goes unchecked because everyone else is so polite. If you did anything like that in New York someone would cut you a new one.