We’ve all heard the wisecrack that the government ought to regulate parenting the way it regulates driving, or any potentially dangerous activity. “People ought to have to qualify for a license to become a parent,” we say.
I was definitely thinking of that sentiment tonight, as my wife and I witnessed one of the most extraordinarily neglectful and dangerous acts of parenting we have ever witnessed.
We were coming home from the grocery store when I suggested my wife drive through Wendy’s for me. A Wendy’s taco salad is superb, mostly because of the chili on top, and I had developed a strong craving for one of these fine salads. So we pulled through the drive thru after ordering my meal, and as we were sitting there waiting for the cashier, we noticed a group of people hanging out in the parking lot.
There was a large, eighties-model pickup with a man sitting on the wheel well, inside the bed talking to a man and a woman leaning up against the driver’s side of an older model, small Toyota of some kind.
But what really attracted our attention was that there was a little boy, perhaps between one and two years old, running around on the roof of the Toyota. He was shoeless, and may well have been so all day judging by how black his little feet were. He wore only a pair of bib overalls over his diaper. He was obviously at that age where children are still learning to walk; they kind of toddle when they run, which I suppose is why they are called “toddlers.”
He would run across the roof, stomp his feet a few times, apparently enjoying the sound of the roof denting and then expanding back into place, and then he would sit down hard on his bum and slide down the windshield. Then he would scramble back up, toddle across the roof as fast as his little legs would go, stomp a few times, and slide down the back glass.
We watched him do this three or four times. The people standing beside the Toyota, whom we assumed were his parents, were intent on their conversation and did not even look at him.
“He’s going to fall off of there!” Lynn said.
“Are those people stupid?” I asked.
We were absolutely dumb founded.
“Where are the police when you need them?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but those parents aren’t even watching him!” Lynn said.
Finally, as we watched in horror, the boy sat down on the driver’s side roof, between the man and woman.
“He’s going to try to jump off there!” I said.
And sure enough, he tried to slide right off the roof. The man and woman did not even make an attempt to catch him. He landed hard on his bare feet and fell flat on his face on the asphalt.
I yelled and put my hands over my eyes. Lynn screamed.
“He landed on his face!” I said.
“Oh my God!” Lynn said.
The woman standing by the car grabbed the boy by his arm and lifted the screaming child off the ground. She was not his mother, apparently, because she passed him to the man in the truck who, amazingly, bounced the boy on his knee and continued his conversation.
None of them seemed in any way affected, except the screaming boy.
After a bit, the boy’s mother came over. She had been at another nearby vehicle talking to someone. She took the boy from the unconcerned father and held him, trying to soothe him by walking him back and forth in the parking lot.
“What were those idiots thinking?” I said. “Even if they had been parked on grass, that was incredibly dumb.”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to say something,” Lynn said.
“No, don’t!” I said, playing the roll of the man who just wants to mind his own business, in those “The More You Know” spots about child abuse or spousal abuse.
“I’m just going to tell her she ought to take him to the emergency room,” Lynn said. “he could have a concussion or a broken nose. Who knows? He fell right on his face on the asphalt!”
So after getting our food, Lynn pulled the car over to where these people were parked and rolled down her window.
“Ma’am, you really ought to take him to the emergency room and have him looked at. He fell right on his face, and you never know, he could have a concussion.”
The woman looked at Lynn a moment, then just said, “Thank you,” and turned away.
Lynn rolled up the window and we drove on, continuing to talk about what we had witnessed.
“Did we overreact to that?” Lynn asked. “Are we just over protective parents?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I was allowed to do some dumb things in my childhood, like ride in the back of a pickup, but I was much older. Those people are just plain ignorant.”
I hate to unfairly generalize, but the word “white trash” would probably be appropriate to describe them, and not just because of the way they were dressed, or because of the vehicles they drove.
Maybe because they had nothing better to do but hang around a fast food parking lot on a Sunday evening, talking with friends?
Maybe because they did not even put shoes on their child before taking him out?
Not only that, but maybe because they let him run around shoeless on top of a car–not even their own car–while no one paid the slightest bit of attention for his safety?
Or perhaps it was the Confederate flag sticker on the bumper of the pickup truck. I don’t know. All I know is, if there were ever a case to be made for requiring people to meet certain competency standards before giving birth to a child, that mother and father should be exhibit A.
