Thursday, August 31, 2006

red - no wait - AMBER alert!

i'm not going to knock the amber alert system. i think it's cool. now that i know what it is, i mean. short story: a few years back, shortly after amber alerts had started (and when i had not yet the need to wake up before a decent hour and watch the news or read a newspaper), i was driving with my sister into manhattan when all of a sudden we came upon one of those changeable highway signs that usually screams "SIGN UNDER TEST." the sign was not under test though, because the sign looked something like this:


now, i was in nyc on 9/11. i could see the towers from my campus at fordham. i watched the news with everyone else. seeing ANYTHING that says ALERT and LOCAL MEDIA doesn't make me feel great. so of course, we turned on AM radio and found out what the deal was with amber alerts (they find missing/kidnapped kids). i have since seen signs with makes and models of cars, license plate numbers and the like. it's pretty informative. and so i pose this question...

in the time of amber alerts and hyper-security freak outs, what the hell were you (unnamed dad) doing yesterday at around 1:45pm on the corner of Varick and Spring Streets in manhattan letting your kid (3 years old at best) ride on his tricycle while you WALKED BRISKLY A HALF A BLOCK AHEAD OF HIM?!

i am not one to call parenting into question. i think all kids are different, as are all parents. you want to give your kid some space because he's a free spirit? cool. how about you let him pick out his own clothes. NOT RIDE ALONE IN MANHATTAN ON HIS TRICYCLE. it really was a kidnapping waiting to happen. and at first when i saw the kid (from my second story window at work while waiting for my popcorn to pop) i couldn't concentrate on anything else, like where his parents were, because he was so damn cute on that tricycle. but then i realized that he had to be about 3 or 4 years old. and that he was approaching the intersection mighty fast. and that once in said intersection, his little adorable (and no doubt chubby) legs were too short to peddle the required speed in order to beat the light. THAT'S when i realized that the dad, who was walking way faster than the kid was riding, turned around and stood in the middle of the street waiting for his spawn to finish crossing the road, only to turn back around and keep WALKING, even though the kid was having difficulty getting up the ramp from the street to the sidewalk.

what the hell is wrong with people?