An art director for L.S. Ayres went to dinner with her small child. The child was four years old, and was carried into the restaurant on her mother’s arm. The mother was almost home when she realized that she had forgotten to bring her child with her.
The manager of a finance company office, working late, received a call from his daughter’s day care: neither parent had picked up the child. The caretakers had finally broken the three-year-old’s code. She could not say where her mother worked, but when asked where her father worked, she said “A Chup Cee.” (Household Finance Corporation was more commonly known as “HFC.”)
These stories ended harmlessly, with both children being reunited with their parents, who are now proud grandparents of a total of four grandbeauties. The two families were composed of educated, responsible professionals who forgot their children, and the stories became amusing anecdotes in the lore of each family. But there are more tragic stories that involve adults forgetting children. With Indianapolis being scorched by record-high temperatures, agencies such as the Indianapolis EMS are posting warnings about the dangers of leaving small children alone in cars. “According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), heatstroke is the leading cause of non-crash-related vehicle deaths in children 14 years and younger, and one child dies approximately every 10 days from being left in a hot car.” A recent editorial in The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky, reported that, “As of June 19, 13 children (nationwide) had died of vehicle-related heatstroke so far this year.”
Often, when we read of parents or caretakers who have left children unattended in cars in summertime heat, we react with revulsion and contempt. We ask ourselves, “How could a parent forget a child?” Or, “How can anyone be stupid enough to leave a child in a hot car?” But we live in a high-sensory world, with greater demands on our time and attention. We must multi-task to make our way through our days and sometimes our attention is split between watching our children and making their breakfast. Modern parents know well the “phone phenomenon,” where your children ignore you until the phone rings and then demonstrate 17 most desperate needs. (I used to tell my two little ones that I was not to be disturbed when on the phone unless their hair was on fire. I got a lot of flames.)
In the Disney animated movie, Finding Nemo, Marlin, a widower clown fish, loses his only son Nemo. Despite his vigilance, a scuba diver captures his son. When I installed a pool in my back yard in Madera, Cal., my daughter got a lot of new friends, and I spent a great deal of time on the wall, counting heads: the ending census had to match the beginning (although there were no scuba divers likely to abduct children from the pool). My second bride would helicopter over our two little ones, while her husband held looser reins. One parent had the children in front of her at all times, and the other was content to let the two follow him like ducklings to a pond. Neither parent was right; neither was wrong.
The death of a child is not an occasion for amusement, and I am not trying to mitigate the responsibility of the adults charged with the safety of children. But when we weed out the drugged and “nodded-out” father and the shoplifting mother — two examples of adults who will make no sacrifice for the little ones — we have many loving and vigilant parents who sometimes glance away, and forget Nemo.