First, about this picture. The boys got these new Thomas shirts in the mail yesterday so there was no question what they'd wear today -- even though they're too big (the shirts, not the boys). Today at the mall, Eddie kept coming up to me at the play structure (fittingly, a train) to complain that someone had touched his shirt or was trying to take his shirt. But that's not the worst of it...
I decide I want to run into Target to see if they have rain boots for the boys. The entire trip should take 2, 3 minutes tops. So I take a chance and leave the boys in the supervision of my 81-year-old mother. (If you thought I was going to say I left them alone, you're nuts.) Anyway, I fast-walk in and out of Target -- what could happen, right? Only when I get back, my mother is standing, talking to someone. Eddie is using a baby wipe to dry his red, tear-streaked face. My elderly mother looks up and says, "Chas was beating the crap out of him." Wha!?!?! Turns out, they were on the other side of the train where my mom couldn't see them well. OK, or at all. A woman approached my mom and asked if she was with those boys just on the other side of the train. Proud grandma puffed up and said yes -- fully expecting, I'm sure, to hear how cute, sweet and/or well-behaved they were. But the woman just informed her that one was beating the crap (her actual words, I'm assured) out of the other one. My mom ran (or her nearest approximation -- did I mention she's 81?) to the other side of the train and discovered Chas atop a wailing Eddie, apparently attempting to remove crap from his brother via the time-honored beating method.
So I asked Chas why he was hurting his brother. "I want to play ring around rosies!" But Eddie didn't want to. So Chas took him down. I make Chas apologize, then agree to play ring around the rosies with him. This attracts a little girl. Before long, both boys are playing with a couple of little girls and I'm allowed to sit it out. The funny thing is, though my guys are the ones with colds, I made sure to anti-bacterial wipe their hands afterward, since they were, ick, holding hands with other children.
And wait, there's more from this little trip. Before all of this happened an elderly woman (not my mother) looked at me and said, "A little one just went in there," pointing to a video arcade next to the play area. Once she'd told me, I guess she figured her work was done because she went back to watching her own grandchild. I wandered over and found a tyke, probably pushing 2, seated at a car game. "Where's your mommy?" The question prompted him to get down and run further into the arcade. Seeing no one inside who could pretend to be responsible for a child of this age, I picked him up and took him back to the play structure. By this time, his frantic mother, clutching a newborn, was looking all over for him. She was standing right next to the elderly woman who sent me after the lad, but this woman either had forgotten or figured it served her right for losing track of her child and didn't bother telling her anything. All was well, in the end. But it got me thinking. When we were at Zoo Lights, I jumped in front of a runaway stroller just before it and its infant passenger careened down an embankment. Mom and Dad were talking with some other people and hadn't noticed it zooming away. Now, in neither this instance nor the mall drama did I have to really go out of my way to save these children. Still. I feel I'm owed some good Karma. And so I just remind the universe of this. So if (who are we kidding, when) I take my eyes off my own little guys for the wrong fraction of a second, I think I deserve to have a kindly person step in and save them from danger and me from crushing guilt/grief/anxiety. That's all I ask.
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