This has been a very strange day.
A few hours ago I heard a man saying "Where's your mommy? Where do you live?" I wandered outside and saw a middle-aged man wandering around my parking lot, trying simultaneously to corral a little girl and attract attention to his problem.
"Is she yours?" He asked me. "I saw her crossing Union Boulevard. She won't talk."
Union is right around the corner from my house, and it is a very busy street with limited visibility; the thought of this two-year old tottering her way across it made my skin crawl.
So we quizzed the girl. She refused to say anything and kept diving toward the street. Meanwhile my neighbour across the fence was shouting "A little girl and you don't know who she belongs to? CALL THE POLICE!"
It was my theory that the toddler couldn't have travelled far, so I ran inside to put on my shoes and do a house-to-house canvass. By the time I came back outside the child's parents were running across Union Boulevard, terrified and shell-shocked, as the old guy half-heartedly berated them.
I suppose this story is only REALLY scary if you're familiar with Union Boulevard. *I* get nervous crossing it.
4 comments:
That is scarey!
I live on Union Street and I know what the Blvd.end is like.And you are right. Crossing it it as an adult is risky. Lucky that she made it across in one piece and that someone friendly found her. Nowdays there are far too many not-so-nice creepies out there.
I am glad that this story had a happy ending.
Oh definitely...when I first heard a guy saying "Where's your mommy?" I'm ashamed to say my initial thoughts were about a creepy guy trying to entice a young girl. Fortunately he was a baffled good samaritan.
Whew!
What is it with wandering toddlers lately? My husband and I nearly ran one over on the main street of Lucknow last week. She was so young she still had a soother in her mouth and was vacantly wandering across the road. Dwain screeched the truck to a halt and I barely had time to throw it in park before he lept out to grab her in his arms and take her off the road. Turns out she just learned how to unlock doors and got away from her mother, who says she keeps all her doors locked when the kids are inside. I thought D was going to freak out on the poor young mum, but he didn't say a word. The look in her eyes told me this wasn't something that would ever happen again.
Yes, that was pretty much how our toddler experience ended; there's a time when a lecture isn't appropriate.
Amazing that we both had this experience at similar times! Maybe this is the time of year when toddlers migrate to fresher baby-food pools.
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