Don’t Lock Your Kid in the Car/“Lady, Get a Life!”
So I’m walking our mini-golden doodle puppy Brownie down Main Street and I see a gleaming black luxury SUV with the front windows cracked. In the backseat, through the tinted windows, I see a 5-year-old little girl screaming, arms flailing, crying. She’s losing it. She’s alone. I stop in my tracks, look around, thinking, “Where’s this kid’s parent?”
The girl sees me and makes eye contact. I look at her, take a step toward the vehicle. Her face is wet, eyes red and sad, her expression blank. She’s stopped crying. We’re staring at each other.
Then I hear, “Keep walking lady, mind your own business!” There’s a man, 6’1”, 270, red-faced, white, carrying an iced tea and a food order number from the counter-service restaurant nearby. He’s approaching an outdoor table maybe 30 feet from his wailing kid inside the car. I’m on the wide sidewalk between him and her, a distance away.
“Oh,” I say, shocked. “I was just
looking to see where this girl’s parents were.”
He sets his stuff down at the table. A 12-year-old girl in black leggings and smugness is seated across from him. The five-year-old has resumed screaming. Loudly. There are people around but no one seems to notice.
“Get a fucking life, you nosy bitch,” he yells at me. I’m standing there, silent.
“Yeah get a life, lady!” The tween spits.
I’m frozen with my dog, looking at him, listening to the kid in the car screaming, not sure what to do. There’s no reality where I leave this scene and move on.
“Keep walking! Everything’s fine!” He shouts at me. And that gets me thinking. This situation is not fine.
I’m the first to say parenting is tough and everyone has their fail moments but no, locking a kid in a car who’s screaming while drinking iced tea and pretending nothing is happening — and verbally attacking the person who asks about it — is not fine.
And because I’ve had some therapy and read a book or two about non-violent communication what I said was, “It seems like your child is quite upset. Maybe you’d like to take her out of the car?”
“Mind your own fucking business, get a life, what are you trying to save the world? Yeah you think you’re saving the world! Get a life.”
“I have a life, my kid is safe at home. Would you like to be locked in a car crying?”
And I’m 5’2” and this guy is standing up, mad, and I was scared. Physically scared. And sad. Because if the guy had just said anything remotely sane or responsible I could’ve kept walking.
If, in response to my saying, “I’m looking for her parents,” he had said, “Oh I just went to get my drink — my bad,” or “Yup I’m here gonna take her out now,” or anything not scary, aggressive, and entitled, the moment could have come and gone.
But now I’m stuck. I have a 5-year-old and a 12-year-old girl watching their father bully and try to intimidate a random, concerned lady (me) and I’m not letting it go.
“I think now I have to call the police,” I say. And I dial. I’m on the phone with them within earshot of the guy. I want him to get the girl out of the car. I’m loudly and obviously giving our location, his description, a description of the situation.
He is shouting at me at the same time, while I’m on the phone, “You’re gonna regret this, you are gonna feel like such a fool, I am gonna sue the shit out of you, I live here, you are gonna see me around, I am gonna find you, you are gonna regret this ....”
And I’m giving info to dispatch all the while. I say to him, while on the phone with the law, “How about you take her out of the car.” The kid is STILL in the car.
Eventually, eventually, he takes her out. Now she’s on his lap, hugging him. She’s so little. Pink flowered shirt. Braids.
I say into the phone, “Maybe the crisis has passed, I think I’ll go.”
He says to me, “I think I’ll put her back in the car now,” looks at me, glinty-eyed, gives me the finger, while holding the kid to his chest. Who does that? While their tween watches?
So I tell the cops I’m gonna stay til they come. He doesn’t put the girl back in the car. The three of them sit while I wait for the police, shaking, a ways away.
The officers come. I flag them down, tell them what happened, what I witnessed. While I’m talking to them the big dad approaches and the officers wave him off. He stands firm and starts saying, “She wasn’t locked in the car! It wasn’t locked and the windows were open.”
I say, “It’s true, the windows were cracked open.” But fortunately the officer is already physically removing the guy from near me, kind of guiding/pushing him away, saying to him, “We’ll talk to you next,” making deep eye contact with me, saying, “You don’t need to talk to him.”
And thank you officer for telling me that, that way, because at that point, after 30 minutes of being relatively good and non-confrontational, yeah, at that point all 5’2” of me was this close to escalating things drastically. But as I said I’ve done a lot of personal growth work and resilience mindfulness stuff and meditation and yoga so what I did was I let the officer remove the dad from my side, I did not grab a fork and try to stab anyone in the neck.
I finished my oral report, said I did not want to press charges, but that I thought it was important this guy learn from someone with authority that it’s not okay to lock one’s screaming kid alone in the car. The officer acknowledged what I said. I asked if I needed to stay, he said no, and Brownie and I turned back around and went home to our precious, sweet life.
We did not make it to the beach. Before turning onto my street I looked back to see if I was being followed. I wasn’t.
For the record, this entire time Brownie the mini-golden doodle puppy waited with me as chill as you please on her leash. Silent. Mellow. Man yelling at mom, it’s cool. Uniformed men in cars with lights, no problem. However once we got home she started barking madly at a leaf falling from a tree next door. I did not eat French Fries. I all who are parents or have had parents find peace. I’m gonna keep going.
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