Each Day Already is a Challenge

Opinions differ

Every summer, there are reports of animals and kids being left in hot cars. Sometimes they survive; sometimes they do not.

You might have seen our local case on the national news last night. The woman - a vice principal - left her 2 year old little girl in her SUV for 8 hours. I imagine it would have been longer than that. The mother was not finished with work and was not the one to "discover" the child.

There really has been an uproar about the Cincinnati area about this one. Supposedly, the woman broke her usual routine and that's why she FORGOT that her child was asleep in the back of the car. I don't understand that one. How does one forget her child???

I know how hot a car can get. I don't have working a/c in my car. When I picked up Derek from the airport on Wednesday (in Dayton about 70 miles away), I made sure I had plenty of water to drink on the trip up and back. I also got an iced coffee at the airport. Even so, the trip, with the windows down and the hot air circulating around the car was pretty miserable.

I have also been known to wait in the car for Derek while he pops in to get his pay check. If he stops to talk for a few minutes, sitting in the hot car - with the windows open - gets mighty uncomfortable.

So...I cannot imagine what that poor child experienced. I have been tempted to see if there's a web site that would explain what she went through and how long it might have taken to die. But I really don't want to know that badly.

So, the taped interviews show the mom crying and remorseful, right? But what about the fact that our local news folks discovered that she has been reported/chastised for having left her child in the car (yes, only 15+ minutes) before. Her school employment record has notes that she has been told before not to leave her child in the hot car. One has to wonder how many times she did that without being caught.

I wondered why the babysitter didn't inquire about where the child was, but that was answered on the news too. The father often took care of the baby, without anyone notifying the babysitter that it would be so. When the kid didn't show up, she just assumed the dad was taking care of her.

It has been decided that there will be no legal punishment for this woman, since it was an accident and not malicious. Folks seem to think that she'll have her own personal prison for a long, long time.

Meanwhile, there was a case of animal cruelty - against a woman of another race and one who was not well off like the vice principal - where the prosecutor had said he wanted her to spend 100 years in jail.

The case stemmed from a dead pit bull found in the woman's backyard. The defense argued that her nephew tied the the stray, sick, pit bull in her yard, where it later died, saying she never even knew it was there. Folks were pretty stirred up about this. About the difference in attitudes. About whether or not this was about race or affluence. The NAACP even got involved. Thankfully, it was decided that whatever jail time that woman already served would be enough.

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Last night on the news, the comment was made that more "accidents" like this happen now than they did before air bags, because car seats have to be in the back seat and a sleeping child can be forgotten. (I still don't get that...)

So...couldn't there be a way to shut off the air bags to put car seats in the front?

Or...couldn't someone invent an alarm that could go off when there's a car seat in the back and someone gets out of the front seat?

There has to be a way...

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You know what else? If I had a kid in the school where this woman is vice principal, I would be wondering how she could be trusted to take care of my child...