We're All Parents, Right?

Teresa and I took Taryn to the Sausalito Faire on Saturday to get some fresh air and let her run around a bit. There was a stage set up on one side where this odd-ball was playing music and having all the kids act out the song and sing and dance and such.

The stage was shaped sort of like a U, it was a big square with two smalled rectangles sticking out on each side where the speakers were set up. And most of the parents had parted themselves in the lawn in front of the stage with a hot dog and a beer.

There were a few parents in the little space between the two rectangles, and I was standing on the outside edge of one of the rectangles with the speakes between me and Boogie shaking her thing up on the stage. At one point, a little boy maybe 4 years old fell over backwards off the stage and hit his head on the ground. There were two parents within arms reach of the kids who was lying on the ground sobbing for his mom, and they both just sat there looking at each other asking, "Is he yours?"

I stood there for maybe 5 seconds, scanning the crowd to see if his parents would go to get him, or if one of the parents right next to him would comfort him. But when I realized that nobody was making a move, I went all the way around the stage and picked him up, asking him where his mom was sitting.

The two parents were asking me, "Is he yours?" and all I could do was snap, "No, but he's still a child." I was so furious that they would just sit there a let a hurt little kid cry, not lifting a finger to help or comfort him, or even to find his parents. When he saw his mom and ran to her, I snatched Boogie off the stage and stormed away.

Now, I don't want to make a racial generalization here, but I really feel that had we been in a group of minorities, someone closer to the kid would have picked him up and helped him find his mom. It's sad to me that parents have become so disconnected from others that they can sit and watch a child cry, and have no reaction to it. Or that people have become so scared of lawsuits that they won't interfere to help someone who is hurt.

So that was my pissy moment for the weekend. I still can't fathom sitting and doing nothing, or being a parent so involved in my own life that I don't see my own kid get hurt. And now I totally don't trust leaving my kid anywhere without my supervision, because who knows if someone will find me if she gets hurt?