A Plague Of Stupidity


I believe stupidity is a disease, and it's spreading.

The wife and I were on a foraging expedition at Walmart. (okay, okay, I know they're evil, exploit workers worldwide, all of that. We are on the thin edge of poor, and they have too many things we need at far lower prices than anyone else). Rachel drives slowly in parking lots because other people often fail to pay attention when backing out or turning into an aisle.

Today, a different kind of inattention nearly resulted in severe injury to a child.

We were crawling down a row of parked cars to reach a space far from the store itself - we don't mind the walk and hate to cruise looking for that one car actually leaving to take that space. On our right was a railing behind which were paving stones and bags of fertilizer. At the end of that row was a bunch of shopping carts. As we approached the mass of shopping carts, a little girl came running at full tilt from behind them, chased by a boy of roughly the same age. She popped out right in front of us. Rachel slammed on the brakes, and the girl retreated, still laughing, saying "sorry!."

Her mother, loading groceries to our left, looks back over her shoulder and says, nonchalantly, "sorry," in a singsong kind of voice. I yell at the kid, "watch what you're doing! You're going to get yourself killed." We drive on to a parking space, exit the car, and start walking back

The mother has her kids in the minivan and is leaving the parking lot, As she passes us one row over, she says to us "You didn't have to yell at her. Now she's upset." We countered with, "She nearly got hit." The woman repeats herself, then drives on.

This is wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. Had we been as inattentive as she was, and so many people driving in that parking lot often are, that little girl would have been struck, and likely injured, even though we were going slow. The mother didn't see it happen, she turned around at the sound of our brakes, and by then the girl had stepped back behind the shopping carts. She had no idea how close it actually was.

So, she yells at us.

Anyone with a lick of sense wouldn't let their kids run amok in a Walmart parking lot full of over sized trucks battling for parking spaces, a parking lot full of frazzled parents trying to manage a cart stuffed with groceries and a coterie of children, or just trying to get the hell out of there and go home. It is a definite recipe for injury or death. It is not surprising to me, thinking about it now, that the mother thought we were out of line, not for nearly hitting her unsupervised kid but for yelling at her out of our own terror over the sudden near miss. I chock it up to the the whole "my kid can do no wrong" attitude that too many parents seem to exhibit. I hold little doubt the woman would have sued us, our insurance company, and Walmart had we even nudged her child. The cynical side of me says "thank god" there are security cameras in those parking lots - we would have won the case.

A case that almost resulted in an unnecessary tragedy.