I saw something the other day and I can’t shake it.
I was at Goodwill and I was sick as hell, shouldn’t have even been out but Alpha had a school project and had to dress up like a park ranger so I needed to find some tan vest shirt khaki crap outfit. Everyone was with us, Cracker was sleeping in her car seat while Alpha and Bambi were fighting over the DVD remote. I was like five minutes from dying from pneumonia in the front seat while Mike ran in first to see if they had something he was looking for…more feckin CRAP that we don’t need but we always seem to find at the Goodwill. While I was waiting for my turn to run in, I saw this couple come out of the front doors and they had what looked like a 24 month old sitting in a shopping cart and they were both screaming at her. They had their faces up really close to her beautiful BABY face and were shushing her and yelling really loudly.
Ok: We all get mad at our kids. They act up when we drag them shopping. This happens.
But there was something really off about this time. They looked normal enough, had a little bit of the Wicker Park-grunge thing going on, but they looked a little older, maybe in their early 30’s: tats on the neck, knit-striped fingerless rock star glove thing going on, but pretty average-looking. They went over to their very nice mini-van and started to put stuff in their trunk. They bought a real cool looking shelf thing for books. I thought, how cute is that thing for a little girls room. But when they got to the car, the mother RIPPED her out of the cart and shoved her face into the baby’s face really closely. Her jaw was clenched and she was doing this low growl thing at her and she was shaking her really hard and I wanted to run and grab the baby from her. After she did that, she turned and looked around to see if anyone saw. I DID. BITCH. I SAW YOU. But she didn’t see me. My gut almost had me jumping out of the car and yelling, “Hey!” but I quickly thought that they would probably get more mad at her. What should I have done? I feel like I failed that little baby. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.
They threw her in her car seat and slammed the door and I was crying because I can picture this little helpless baby at home with these horrible evil people. And I wanted to grab her and put her in our car and I would hold her and love her and I don’t even know what she looked like…I didn’t know what to do. I was so sick and out of it but I should have done something and that was 9 days ago. Every day since then I think of the Goodwill baby and where she is and if I would have done something, called the police or written down the license plate, something, anything but not just fucking SIT there. I am ashamed and I can’t stop picturing her parents screaming and hitting her in her kitchen, her bedroom, everywhere she is supposed to feel safe and loved. Tell me, what would you do? And…what have I done by not doing anything?
All I can do right now is pray for her and hug my babies an extra 100 times every day.
I am feeling the shame that they should be feeling and I pray that she is okay.
You would not be the only one who did nothing, you can safely include many of us to be in the same boat as you. Isn’t it funny that in this modern world, people are screaming about human rights but here we had someone who needed the rights most and couldn’t speak up for himself, and we are totally lost as to what we could do.
Thanks so much for commenting, I couldn’t agree with you more about feeling helpless as to what we can do…thanks again for stopping in…Heather
It is so terrible that this kind of thing happens everywhere, and every day.
One cant help but feel that one day, the world we are creating through our children, will come back to haunt us.
serebrianskaya@googlemail.com
How sad for that poor baby. I’m not sure what you could have done and really, I have no idea if I would have been able to ‘do’ anything other than glare.