Saturday, January 17, 2009

A Life Threatening Trip To Lowe's

Today the god of child rearing tested us...and we failed!

We headed to Lowe's, the hardware store, to pick up some stuff for our house. As we walked out of the store, we realized we might have gotten carried away. How were we going to fit the lumber in our Subaru Legacy?

We were SO pre-occupied with this dilemma that, for a brief minute, we lost track of our surroundings. As I guided the front end of the lumber into the passenger's seat, I remembered hearing a shopping cart go by. Then I heard my husband yell "Oh shit!"

I turned around just in time to see our shopping cart start rolling down the inclined parking lot straight for a busy street. With Jacob inside it! While my husband sped to catch the cart, a good samaritan intercepted it and rolled it back towards us. We took our cart back and profusely thanked the stranger, who had an infant in his car. As he walked away, I could have sworn I heard him mutter under his breath: "amatuers..."

After that experience, we felt more than a little embarassed and had a hard time looking our oblivious, smiling son in the face. I think we learned a lesson here...

5 comments:

gudnuff said...

Parking lots are to responsibility as vodka shots are to virginity. Okay, that analogy sucks, but you see the point. More crimes against responsible behavior occur in parking lots than any other place. There is just too much to keep track of. The good news is that it only takes one incident like this to slap you awake to the danger awaiting you. And that guy who caught the cart...don't think for one second that something similar hasn't happened to him at some point. Scary lesson, but you won't do it again. Just like I will never leave my purse in a shopping cart and drive home without it at 11:30 at night again. Some things only happen once.

Mary Lewis-Pierce said...

I can imagine how stressful this was. I thought you might want to hear a couple of my early parenting mistakes. When P was really little I decided to try and lug him in my arm and the very heavy stroller up the stairs. I have no idea why I thought this was a good idea. Well, I lost my grip and the stroller missed his head by half an inch.

Also, someone told me that it would be ok to leave him on a pillow. So I did. I went to make tea. But when I came back in, of course he had fallen off and was struggling to keep his head up!

Everyone almost kills their child. You live and learn.

KG said...

This totally reminds me of my total fail when we brought Sumo home from the hospital. I had to supplement Sumo's boob milk with formula even from the beginning. Before my milk came in, the nurses told me I could give him "an ounce but no more than two ounces" of formula at a time. Umm ... maybe if he'd weighed in at 5 and a half lbs .. We followed their instructions and our kid was so starved he just started sleeping ALL day and ALL night. When we brought him to the pediatrician the next day, the doctor was all, "I have no idea why the hell the nurses told you that. Give him as much as he wants - a baby of this size should be eating at least three times that amount of formula." EPIC. FAIL. Parenting lesson #1: Feed the baby.

MJV said...

Glad he's all right. We have all been there. I remember one sleepless night when I realized in the morning that I'd been using a Tablespoon instead of a Teaspoon to give Pumpkinhead his Tylenol. CRAP! That'll teach me not to use the syringe. There are so many ways to hurt your child and you can't possibly prevent them all. When I hear a story, I just think "But for the grace of God go I..." You never know. (My Dad once left us in the car while he was loading wood on top of the car. My brother kicked the manual car out of gear and it went flying down a hill. Fortunately other patrons ran over and helped us but it could have ended very badly because I think we were 4 and 6 at the time.)

Portia said...

Oh goodness. I can't imagine how that felt - you must have cuddled him like crazy afterward!

Once I drove all the way across town, went to get Eden out of her car seat, and realized I never buckled her in. I almost passed out.