Apparently strollers do not depreciate as quickly as cars

Last night I received a call from the children’s consignment clothing store where Autumn and I visited Dora last weekend. I had brought in her summer clothes from last year and quite a few large items like her pack and play, jogging stroller and the large Graco stroller we had paired with her car seat when she was an infant. They bought all my gear straight away and said I could retrieve whatever clothes they didn’t want and money for the clothes they did a couple of hours later, which I did not, hence the call.

Three days later I pulled up in front of the store again and shuffled my way across the parking lot. As I carefully avoided the raised slab of pavement that was my undoing the last time I was there, I noticed Autumn’s Graco stroller sitting out front. Oddly enough, I had managed to sell the thing back to the very store from which I had bought it. I felt a pang of sentimentality as I remembered how nice it was to have a portable child, but on approach I caught sight of the price tag pasted to the top of the stroller and nearly gasped. They were selling it for $40, the exact price we paid for it used three years ago. And I hadn’t even included the stupid rattle toys that had originally been stuck to the tray.

If my whole dream of making a living as a writer never pans out, I just might consider going into the consignment business.