SAVING 4 YEAR OLDS LIFE FROM...

HIS LOVING MOTHER

I was walking down a street here in Old Town (Chicago) 
not really paying attention when the back door of an SUV 
opened.  I probably  wouldn't have noticed it, but a little 
boy, 4 years old I'd guess, jumped out.  

A woman was sitting behind the wheel and speaking
on the cell phone and didn't notice what had happened.
Without thinking I noticed the car's engine was running.
The boy for some reason ran round behind the car,
and then to my horror, the white tail lights came on.


I don't know if the car actually started backing up,
or I just imagined it, but I started shouting,
"Stop!  Stop! and ran back to her window and started
tapping on the glass.


I must have not frightened her, because she rolled
down her window, and clearly annoyed, asked me,
"What is it?'   


Suddenly I didn't know what to say.  If I said, " You're
about to run over and kill your child," it would amount
to saying, "You're a bad mother."


"Your back door's open."  She looked back: Oh my God!
She jumped out of the car.  Her first reaction when she 
saw her son was safe was to let out an immense sigh of
relief through her whole body; then she ran over
half hugged-half grabbed  the boy, upbraiding him for 
what a bad boy he had been, how much he had scared
Mommy.  The phone was still in her hand, but I don't
think realized it.


She didn't look back at me, which I thought was 
sensitive of her, because I was embarrassed to have 
witnessed the scene and would not have known
what to say.  I came here and met you.


--My best recreation of a story I overheard at
The Starbucks at North & Wells in Chicago.

The speaker was a young man in his twenties
I'd guess.  He was talking to another guy much
more casually dressed.

Maternal Instinct & Death Mobiles

Everytime an SUV rounds too close to my
kids and I as we are crossing the street,
and I look up and see a mom - identifiable
by the back seat children's car seats,
sometimes filled with actual live children -
talking on a cell phone or texting, I wonder
what has become of that driver's maternal
instinct.

It's strange to strap your child carefully
into her car seat and then drive distracted.
The only explanation that comes to mind
is that most people when driving an SUV
or even a regular car don't really realize
the destructive potential of thousands of
pounds of steel and combustible fuel
hurdling along at speeds their ancestors of
even a 100 years ago hardly dreamed.

Automobiles are also death mobiles.  The
convenience they bring us is bought at a
high price in many ways, but still of course
they can not move us through space as quickly
as a cell phone or Blackberry can.

While in an automobile, we're almost nowhere.
The car is a bubble which separates us from
the humans around us so we can move as quickly
as possible to another place; but a phone allows our
body to be in one spot and our mind in another.

Travelling in a car while speaking on a phone,
we're not even really present in the strange limbo
of the automobile itself; and we're certainly not
as mindful of those bodily around but
doubly excluded from our attention by car
and phone.  Unfortunately, the vehicle with all
its destructive potential is actually there, and
if not minded can cause great harm or kill.

It's not an exaggeration to  say humans need
attention; and unfortunately when someone
driving does not give it and others the attention
required, it can prove this point in dramatically
catastrophic fashion.