This morning I got a reminder of how simple mistakes can have severe consequences. I dropped my kids off at school and on the way home I was shocked to see a boy, age 8, not wearing a coat, not wearing shoes, holding his hands up to stop traffic. Shocked because it was 18 degrees. A lady and I pulled over immediately (other people merely passed him by). The boy seemed dazed, had some scuffs and scratches and seemed scared.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I told the lady “Police Station” and picked the boy up and put him in my car (I only now realize how that must’ve looked), then I jacked the Heat up to 11 and headed back toward my kid’s school. The lady didn’t meet me but the Police were more than happy to take over. And now he’s gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All I know is that he was definitely feverish and probably delirious.<\/p>\n
He’d been left alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He went to my kid’s school.<\/p>\n
He was 8, but in 2nd grade.<\/p>\n
Here’s what I believe happened based on snippets of sniffly dialogue and pure panic. The boy has a brother or sister and his mom left him home because he was sick. She was coming back, of course, but the boy being sick and young wandered outside instead. Once out there delirium, panic and cold took hold.<\/p>\n
Of course, I saw my own kids in this boy.<\/p>\n
I hope I’m not wrong, but even if it was a more serious situation (I had visions of one of those kids held in a basement), I’m glad I brought him to the police. I can tell myself he’s okay and that makes me feel warmer. And reminds me how cold I’d feel had I just passed him by.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning I got a reminder of how simple mistakes can have severe consequences. I dropped my kids off at school and on the way home I was shocked to see a boy, age 8, not wearing a coat, not wearing shoes, holding his hands up to stop traffic. Shocked because it was 18 degrees. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}