Sweet Child O' Mine

A reader pointed me to a story about penalties for parents when children die in cars.

I have to admit that this was always a fear of mine. I used to live much further north (yes, that is possible), and it would be easy for a baby to freeze to death during most of the year if left alone in a car. These parents almost never mean to hurt their kids; they are simply distracted and forget that there's another person in the back seat. When driving alone with Michael, I would keep up a steady monologue, partly so I wouldn't forget that he was there: "Hey look, it's the northern store! I'm really hungry, aren't you? We'll go there in a few minutes and get some bagels. Do you think they have any without mould on them? You'll have to help me check. Yes, I'll get you some seaweed, too."

This terrifying story reminded me of something funny, and I will spread it around to keep my loyal readers from getting too depressed. I'm certain I saw this when it was a news story, but those disappear from the InterWeb and are replaced with your standard-issue urban legends, so I can only refer to this link as (shoddy) proof that I didn't make the whole thing up. The people who run that website are using the story as proof that angels protect people (I wonder what Uriel would have to say about this idea), but I prefer to think of it as proof that men are, underneath it all, morons.

One Mother's Day (yes!) a man decided to go for a drive with his two children. He placed the baby's car seat on the roof of his car while he helped the older child with her seat belt. Then he got into the car and drove away. During the ride, he noticed an odd sound, which is when the baby seat came flying off the roof and landed in the middle of the highway. Don't worry; the baby wasn't hurt, and neither was the man, at least until he told his wife this story. My favourite part is that he did not notice that he had only 50% of his children with him, but he did notice that his car was making a funny noise.