Ten Seconds
“What were you thinking? You KNOW better than that. I swear to God I am going to FREAKING call freaking John Walsh and have him come talk to you. You won’t listen to ME about this. Maybe HE can get through to you.”
Sometimes I’m That Mom out in public.
Awhile back Livvie and Ginny and I were playing out front, and I called Ginny because it was time to go back in. She didn’t come. I called again. Nothing. So I told Livvie to follow me, and I walked around the back of the house, calling Ginny loudly in the “I mean this shit, dog. Get back here right NOW,” voice, and Livvie was starting to cry. I walked through the woods, looking for her on the ground in case she’d been snake bitten, and I finally heard breathing to my left. I looked over to find that she’d jumped the back stock fence and couldn’t figure out how to get back over.
I went over the fence, picked her up, placed her over, and then perp walked her back into the house by the back of the neck.
When she didn’t come my stomach sank. She’s microchipped, but she wasn’t wearing her collar. She’s no longer all that street smart, which is odd because she’d survived for so long with her litter running loose in the world before she was found.
It was an awful feeling.
Today was worse.
Livvie is generally good in public. She knows, “Stay where I can see you,” and “Don’t move. I’m looking at this really quick.”
But today I was in the infant/toddler clothing department in Target, trying once more to find something for my son to wear as pajamas, and I saw a shirt hanging. I stopped the cart, flipped for two seconds through the hangers to see if they had his size, and glanced up.
My daughter was gone.
The first thing you feel is a gut kick.
Then you call.
“Livvie!”
Nothing.
The next thing you feel is your bowels start to twist. Concurrent with that is the hair on your neck standing up.
You call again.
“Livvie!” <insert Voice of Doom> “GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW.”
And then you see your kid come around from behind a rack of clothing five racks away. And that’s when you lose your shit.
So after I finished with the diatribe at the beginning of this post I walked her ass over into the baby aisles. I grabbed a pink puppy harness off of the shelf and ripped it from its packaging. I tossed the empty box in the cart.
“You have NO idea. NO IDEA. This is NOT 1978, Livvie. Two seconds. IT ONLY TAKES TWO SECONDS.”
I pulled the harness from its twisty ties and fastened it to her.
“You are wearing this until you’re thirty, Livvie. And you just blew your chance at a new bottle of bubbles. You can forget the bubbles. The deal was you had to behave.”
I led her around by the pink tail of the puppy until I finished finding everything I needed, and then I got in a checkout lane. When it was our turn I pointed to the empty box on the conveyer and said, “She’s wearing that. For the rest of her life.”
Livvie likes her puppy a lot. She’s named it Bella. When we got home she pretended to take it out to pee.
And I sat here trying to figure out how to get through to her. How can I make her understand how important this is? She wasn’t there in 1981. She doesn’t pay attention to the news now, and even if she did it wouldn’t make sense.
I’ve respected the Walshes greatly my whole life, but today-
She was gone for ten seconds total.
How do people live when it’s forever?
17 Responses to “Ten Seconds”
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Trash Talking
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Yeah. Understood.
Do NOT read the first chapter of GATEKEEPER by Michelle Gagnon, by the way.
Thank you for the warning.
There are just some things I can’t handle anymore.
I can’t take Jason to the adult library. He runs off into the far distant stacks, he doesn’t stay in the chair I tell him to sit in, and he generally makes a bloody nuisance of himself with the heavy feet and the loud laughter.
I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in months at the grocery store the other day. Had Jason with me, and we stopped to chat. Her new baby’s the same age as Amber, just two weeks older, so I whipped out the cell phone and showed pictures like any proud mama. All this while, Jason’s staying in my line of sight. Then, he runs into the laundry aisle. I call for him to get back, tell him “You have to stay where mommy can see you”. I keep an eye on him as he runs over to check out the icy pop boxes stacked on display. I continue chatting with my friend. Then he starts running in circles around the display case. Then he runs halfway across the store.
Forget lucky no one snatched him (I live in a ridiculously low-crime area, but still). He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.
I grew up in a very low crime town of about 4000 people.
When I was in my early 20s, maybe even just 20, some sick fuck lured a little girl with the old, “Come see my puppy” trick. They found her body down near the shore.
It can happen anywhere, and it takes a split second.
I honest to God nearly lost it on her right there.
We went through two serious scares with our Autistic son. At age 10, he suddenly turned into an escape artist. While he is verbal, he doesn’t always respond to questions from strangers, and certainly isn’t going to give the information they want just because they ask for it. He’s going to tell them what he feels like telling them and that’s that. So, since he was five, he’s worn a steel bracelet with his name, his home address and all our contact numbers on it. We found out it worked at 3am one Saturday morning. The phone rang. It was the police. They’d picked Nick up on the side of Route 31, which is a highway, more than three miles from home. He told them he was going to get pizza. Evidently, he was heading for the mall. Hey, another couple miles and he would have made it. He just got up in the middle of the night and left.
You can’t put keyed locks on the inside of your doors — fire code violation. So we put some latches up high where we figured he couldn’t reach them, and then we wired alarms into all the doors and windows so that if he opened any mode of egress anywhere, we’d hear about it.
Then a couple weeks later, maybe an hour before sunset, we were all out in the yard. We’d just had a cookout, everybody was playing on the swingset, my wife and I were running in and out of the house bringing the dishes in and the dessert out. And I came out of the house and the back gate was open and Nick was gone.
It was worse that time. The first time, we didn’t know he was missing until the cops called. This time we knew from the first minute. I ran around the block, but couldn’t see him. We took both cars, me taking the north-south streets, Meg working the east-west ones. Nothing. We’d called the cops by then, of course, so they were at the house when we got back — he’d been gone 30 minutes at this point.
And they took the information, and they sent out the alerts and they told us to stay home, that there wasn’t really anything we could do and we would be more help at home, in case they needed more information or we got a call or anything, and I said “You mean like a ransom call?” and the copy said “Like any kind of call,” but I knew what he meant, and it was all the way dark now, and Nick had been gone for more than an hour and I sat in the chair watching out the window thinking that my life would be forever divided between the moment I went into the house and Nick was on the swing and the moment I came back out and the gate was open, and that the rest of my life was going to feel just like this, staring out windows and not knowing, never knowing . . .
Thirty minutes after that, an elderly black couple pulled into the driveway. They lived in the housing project maybe five miles from our house, across Jericho Road, near where the bicycle path crossed some train tracks. They’d found Nick just sitting by the side of the road on the bike path. It was summer and he was covered in bug bites. He told them it was too dark for a hike. They looked at the bracelet and brought him home.
And we tried to pay them, which felt so stupid — what do you offer perfect strangers for your son’s life? $20? Everything you own? And they said no, and we went back and forth like that and finally they left, and the police had called family services because it was the second time Nick had run off in a couple of weeks, but they saw the alarms and the locks and everything else, and just told us we really had to watch him, like we didn’t know.
And he never ran away again. Never even tried. And we don’t know why, but to this day my gut feels like a garabage disposal every time I hear about a missing kid.
Our kids are ASD, and completely hyper-social. Best friends with someone the minute they walk through the door, or meet them on the street. They don’t understand boundaries, though a portion of their therapies are geared towards instilling those in them. They don’t understand danger the same way we do — I’ve had my heart in my throat, running in ways my 13 years of smoking nearly kill my lungs for, chasing after him because he’s running towards a very busy street.
Which means when we take them anywhere, we have to watch them like fucking hawks. Jason refuses to ride in the cart anymore, so it’s a constant reminder in that I’m-speaking-to-a-baby voice to “stay by mommy” and “stay where I can see you”.
I was seeing one interviewee out the door Wednesday afternoon when Jason shot by me and took off down the hall, through the door and into the far end section of my apartment building, laughing his ass off. If the door to the stairwell hadn’t been too heavy for him to pull open, he would have been up the stairs and I could have lost him on any of the four floors.
He has an allergic reaction to the MedicAlert bracelet I bought and had engraved for him, so he can’t wear it. When we get into a house of our own, I foresee having to install locks on the very tops of our doors, where they can’t reach, even if they try to climb.
I have to constantly remind myself that our perception of stranger-danger and abduction in 2010 is, in a word, wrong.
I mean, the Today Show? Voice to millions. Mid-June, their lead story was about a boy who disappeared while walking from one classroom to another, inside the building. In fact, every morning the lead story is about a child who has disappeared or been murdered.
But the number one cause of death in children is motor vehicle accidents. Far and away. FAR and away.
In 2005, 1,335 kids in the US died as occupants in motor vehicle crashes. About 184,000 were injured. 4 deaths and 504 injuries a day.
But the 4 deaths a day aren’t the lead story on the Today Show, because it doesn’t get fucking ratings.
It doesn’t SCARE us enough.
Today is, in fact, 1978, in terms of abduction dangers. The difference is we get the shit scared out of us by the media so much more today. Constantly. So much so that we arrest kids trying to help other kids when they can’t find their parents. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/views/os-mike-thomas-juvenile-arrest-06151020100615,0,1374755,full.column
Yes, kids do get abducted every day. Absolutely. However, the majority — the vast majority: 82% — are snatched by a parent or family member. Eighty-two percent, according to the DoJ. We fear this one thing more than any other danger to our kids, when it is not the greatest danger, and even in that fear we fear the wrong thing.
I have to remember that, when I eye the kid-leash after Kaylee scares the holy bejeezus out of me. Cuz someday I’ll be dead, and I need her to not need me holding her leash when I’m gone.
That’s my worry, bigger even than abductions — that this fear factory we live in today is making us raise our kids to be utterly helpless adults who blow rape whistles when some old parking lot attendant asks them if they need directions.
It’s hard. It’s SO hard. I cried like a tubby bitch when I thought my dogs had been irrevocably lost last year (3 horrible, long days). The thought of any of the hundred thousand things that could happen to my daughter in a given day and take her from me wakes me up from a sound sleep all the time.
I have to keep trying to filter the fear noise down to a reasonable signal. It’s a constant effort.
You make very good points. All I know from is dog training, though (and my husband hates when I analogize thusly).
I told her she will wear this until she learns to listen to me about this.
The “leash” tail hooks to the backpack, so it’s going this way-
We go out with the harness on. Today even it was put to the test as she tried to walk away several times, and the tug at my hand alerted me to say, “Stay right here Livvie. You stay with me. You do not walk off.”
When we get past that point I will unhook the tail and carry it in my pocket. If she wanders, the tail will go right back on.
Her communication skills are below her age level. When I was her age, and I wandered from my mom I knew to find an adult (actually Customer Service) and ask for help. She’s still uncomfortable with answering questions, so if some random nice stranger found her she wouldn’t know how to help them help her find me.
And her ass is going in martial arts classes as soon as she’s ready.
… Holy sweet shit, are we not supposed to help lost children now? Jesus.
There was a pretty popular blogger with a publication, Lenore Skenazy, who caught a shitload of flack for letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway home by himself. He viewed it as something of a rite of passage, and he wanted to do it. Lenore and her husband spoke it over, and agreed they felt he was ready.
After she made sure he knew how to get home, had a metro card, a subway map, twenty bucks, change for the payphone, and all the life lessons she as a parent was responsible for providing him, she left him at Bloomingdale’s, went home, and waited for him. He got home fine, proud as punch and probably a lot more confident in himself about an hour later.
Then she blogged about it for her publication.
Holy shit, media tempest.
She was accused of irresponsible parenting and negligence. Sometimes even by her friends. So much even that she was asked to come on the Today show where she was harangued by a “parenting expert” about why she’s suddenly America’s Worst Mom.
I heard about this through Penn & Teller’s Bullshit episode on stranger danger. Really made me reconsider some of my viewpoints.
I agree with everything you’ve got to say — for my normal duaghter. But for my two disabled sons, all of that is out the window. They’re never going to be independent and they will always be at risk. Just the way it is.
Yeah, streets can be fun. For a while, Nick was seeing a doc in Chicago. Traffic was always bad, which agitated him, so he’d be in a mood when we got to the city. He was 12 at this point, and I’d already had a busted nose and a cracked tooth trying to deal with some of his major tantrums, so usually, if he threw one, I’d just step back and let him burn himself out a little before intervening.
Except we were going to the doc and Nick had a meltdown right in the middle of Taylor street — that’s two lanes in both directions, everybody doing maybe 40 in the posted 30 trying to beat the next light. So I couldn’t leave him there. I got him from behind, around the torso as best I could, and hauled him to the curb, with him scratching at my face and headbutting me the whole way.
Somebody must have seen a grown man hauling a kid out of the street, so, of course, the cops showed up, lights and siren going, which REALLY helped, because Nick has severe auditory sensitivity issues. And there I am with blood on my face and my t-shirt ripped down to my navel and Nick screaming like a banshee and trying to get away and the cops telling me to let go of the kid and me telling them I can’t do that. I finally got tem to shut off the damn siren, and Nick burnt himself out a little, and I explained the situation. They checked my ID, and they called the doc’s office, and they confirmed Nick had an appointment there, and one of the cops asked Nick who I was, and at the tops of his lungs, Nick screamed, “THAT’S BUTTHOLE!” and the other cop said “I think it’s his Dad,” and they let us go on our merry way. Doc gave me a scrub shirt to wear home.
Which brings me to the question….we routinely chip our puppies and have been doing so for years. How come we don’t chip our kids? (And that’s only a half-joking question.)
We do, once they are teenagers. All sorts of software you can load on to phones and cars that will pinpoint them at any moment. We don’t need it then — that’s when they need they’re freedom. But if something had been available when my Autistic son was younger, I would have been all over it.
It’s just all so crazy. They actually do have lo-jacks for little kids now.
http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/locator.html?gclid=CIjtrNuWzqICFQQtawodvxxTxA
Among others.
It’s out of control. I do agree with Doyce that we can’t smother, but I also know that we’re under alert in this area now once again that someone has been trying to snatch kids.
One thing that IS different from 1978, in my estimation, is that these days people are less likely to get involved. For many reasons.
One of the things experts/studies say makes neighborhoods safer? Letting your kids all play outside with each other. Many eyes on the neighborhood. Makes perfect sense. Just have to, you know, talk to your neighbor’s about it; get the kids playing.
I don’t even know my neighbor’s names. I know the name of the dog across the street. That’s about it. I fail.
And then you have our issue- No kids on this street that are of the same age groups.
We’ve got some teenagers and some kids that look to be about 9 maybe. Sometimes I hear the younger kids, who I think are siblings, playing down at the end of the street. We’re on a very long cul de sac in a subdivision of doublewides out in the country. Our house is close enough to the road going by that we can see it from our front windows. We also have some wandering dogs out here that will fight among themselves. About a month and a half back Rich and I were out there and two chow mixes went after each other in the street in front of our house.
I forced myself on my neighbor across the street a few months back, once the winter weather broke and I noticed people coming out of hibernation. My mom was down from NJ, so I left her with the kids and walked across the street and introduced myself. I know her well enough to call if I need anything now, but she and her husband have no kids.
When I was a kid we all played together on my street. It didn’t matter how old anyone was. We played as a group constantly, and everyone’s parents were friendly too. I miss all of that. We had block parties often as well.
You know you can introduce yourself to the neighbors at any time, right? I’m going to assign that to you for the holiday weekend. Go meet one neighbor. Baby steps.
Same thing happened to me with Ian when he was about three years old at toys r us in Nashville. I had the whole store on lockdown within a matter of minutes. The feeling is incomprehensible unless you are a mother and have experienced it for yourself