Me, Her, the Boy and a Dog
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Nic and I went to the park today. We tried to go berry pickin’ but didn’t get there until 11:30 a.m., and they close at … you guessed it, 11:30 a.m. So, we headed over the park and played for about two hours.
Nic met a lot of little kids there, but befriended a little boy named Austin, who was at the park with his dad, Scott, his mom and his older brother. Scott was kind enough to snap a picture of me and Nic. Nic doesn’t get to be around kids his age very often, so I am always worried how he’ll interact with them, but he did a great job today, with some gentle reminders from his old (and getting older) man.
At one point, Austin was ahead of Nic on this monkey-bar type ladder that kids walk up to get to the slides when he slipped and started to fall. His dad was right there and was able to grab his leg, but not before Austin’s little head bumped one of the bars. Instictively, I lunged forward and manage to grab his little arm before he hit the ground. It was about a six-foot drop, which for a 2-year-old is quite a drop.
Austin was just fine; he was more scared than anything. But, he only cried for a couple of minutes before he was ready to tackle the monkey-bar bridge thing again. When Nic first started climbing that thing, he slipped once, but he was able to hold on with his arms long enough for me to secure him, so he didn’t take quite the tumble that he witnessed today.
I found it interesting that even though you are on the playground with your kids, as a parent, you are also concerned about the safety and well-being of other kids. Well, at least I hope that’s how most responsible and caring parents feel. After the Austin incident was over, I started thinking about how I had left Nic on the ladder for a couple of seconds to help Austin. I didn’t think about it at the time, I just reacted. Granted, Nic has been climbing this ladder for a long time and 99 out of 100 times, he gets up there without a problem. But I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for leaving him, if only for a couple of seconds and just a few feet away.
