Drawing My Sword in Anger

I’m going to pop off a couple rants here, so if you have issues with my ‘drawing my sword’ as Harvey puts it, you need to move on down a couple posts.  This is a big rant. Really big.

When my better half and I decided to become parents, we knew there would be changes.  Inconveniences, if you may.  No more spontaneous sex on a lazy weekend afternoon, no more going to the bathroom by myself… stadium seating installation being incorporated into the bathroom decorating scheme was seeming like a good option, going grocery shopping alone was a memory, spontaneous fine dining became a no-no.  None of this is big deal stuff and we were prepared for all of it, except maybe the inability to ever go to the bathroom without an audience. That one did kind of come as a shock.  The rest of it… you deal.  All these little insignificant things come with being a parent.

So here’s the deal.  Never, ever, ever should you ever ever ever think about, even for one frickin’ millisecond, leaving your baby or young child unattended in a car.  Never. Ever.  I don’t give a rat’s ass if you live in Adak and its August and its 12 Noon and a balmy 50 degrees, 73% humidity.  It is a big no no and an offense that we Floridians are way way over.  You don’t even leave your baby/young child unattended with the windows up, doors locked, A/C running, just to run in and grab a gallon of milk.  NO!  NEVER!  Bad things can happen.  Very bad.

Yes, I have gone to Publix only to find that one or all three of my children were asleep.  You have two options then.  You either pick them up and carry them while you grocery shop or you GO HOME and come back when everyone is awake.  That’s it. Those are your choices!  You do NOT leave your baby in the car. EVER! 

First, there are bad evil people in this world.  What you read in your daily rag tag of a newspaper is just the tip of the iceberg.  Just befriend a cop. He’ll tell you there are some nasty MF’s out there. Bad mean evil people who do horrible thing to children.  You leave your child unattended, you are just rolling the dice with fate as to what happens next.  Period.

Second, in the summer time, your child will die in your car.  Sure as shootin’, it’s gonna happen.  We just had another death last week in Boca. Some dumb ass dentist left his young 3 year old son while he ran into the office. I am sure he promptly got distracted and 3 hours later, his kid was baked to death.  That simple.  A columnist down here in our paper was so enraged at the number of deaths we had had in cars one year, children unattended, that he holed himself up in his car with a thermometer and a stopwatch and a cameraman and sat there… for about 20 minutes until his car got to something like 140 degrees inside and he couldn’t take it anymore.  Nice, eh? That’s what these lowlife non thinkers are doing to their kids.  Every GD summer I read about some low life mother who decided she wanted to go shopping, locks her baby in the car, windows rolled up and comes back to dead baby.  Or the parent goes to a party.  And on and on…

Listen, accidents happen.  I remember hearing about a guy who drove to work, forgetting his sleeping kid was in the car and came back to his car after work and the kid was dead.  Tragic.  His taking the kid to daycare was out of his routine.  Chances are he was suffering from sleep deprivation as we all do when we have young ‘uns.  And being a working parent, trust me, the guy had a lot on his mind.  Bad things happen and it is sad. But those are few and far between.  Thankfully, because it is truly tragic and I still ache for that father.

However, the other morons… well I am officially sick of it.  You never leave the baby/child even for a second. This is being sparked by another article I read today where a Good Samaritan found a baby in a car and called the police. 

Let it officially be known, I am not a Good Samaritan if I happen upon a case like this. I am the parent’s worst fucking nightmare.  I will call 911 to get the child out, if I don’t break through a window with a crow bar from my car first, and if the parent happens upon me while I am waiting for the proper authorties, I promise you, I will view them as a threat to this child, and I will firmly place a side thrust kick upon their knee at approximately 5psi and for the rest of their GD lives, their permanent hobble will remind them of the time they almost killed their kid and they will feel lucky that this stranger who saved their child, did not do more than destroy their knee.  I swear to you, the parents of these ‘unattended’ children, do not want it to be ME that finds their children in these cars.  ‘Nuff said.