Mind your own children while

you are "having coffee" with your friends!

I am still feeling a little shaken and, perhaps, stunned by how fast I managed to move yesterday. Yes, I know it is a pedestrian crossing too but the small one on it was entirely alone.

We have a pedestrian crossing outside our shopping centre. It is one with constantly flashing lights which requires drivers to slow down and then stop and give way to pedestrians who are crossing. 

I was coming up to it yesterday when I saw a very small figure coming in the opposite direction. There were also cars coming on either side - and, for once, nobody else around. Fortunately the cars were moving slowly and about to stop. They had seen me. They had not seen the small figure already about a metre into the roadway. He was not exactly visible from their angle. He was from mine.

Instead of taking my usual cautious approach I put on speed and I grabbed. He wailed. He struggled. He screamed. He tried to bite. Someone else came to my rescue at that point. The drivers went on with long blasts on their horns. I am not sure if they thought I was somehow responsible. 

"Yours?" asked the other person furiously.  

"No. I saw him..."

"Look I have to go...that's my bus..."

"Put him in my basket...come on you can have a nice ride..."

One small screaming, wriggling child was put in the large basket on the back of my little vehicle. Yes, it is a large basket but it was still only just large enough to fit a nappy wearing toddler. I kept firm hold of him as he screamed at me and wheeled into the coffee area of the shopping centre. 

Yes, there was his mother. She was sitting at a table with another woman. It was not until I was all the way down the little ramp past the ice cream place and I was visible to her that this woman actually noticed her child had wandered off. 

Her reaction is something I still find unbelievable. "Oh, he was playing with the train thing there. I thought he was all right."

I did not say a word. I did not say anything at all. I was too shaken and too angry. It was the other woman who asked me, "Where did you find him?"

"Out on the road," I told her.

There was silence apart from the sound of small child screaming. Right around me people looked shocked...everyone, except the mother. She just put him down on a chair and distracted him with a piece of biscuit. 

No, I was not thanked. I am not sure I wanted to be thanked. I would just have liked her to show some concern for her child's safety.