Busted? Or wrongly charged?

My apologies to those of you at the park today who already heard this story, but I just couldn't resist sharing my little run-in with the law this morning. Now, I know what you're thinking: "She probably got pulled over for speeding or running a stop sign or doing something stupid in her car." Good guess for someone who drives the way I do. But actually no.

It all started when I decided to walk to Washington Park today for Park Day, and since the post office was on the way that meant I could send a few Christmas packages that needed sending. Perfect. Or so I thought...

Quick side-note: Pushing my double stroller is really hard these days. (I go walking three times a week, but I only push Eli those days since Benito plays with his friends) Either my kids are gaining some serious poundage and making things harder for me, or my arm muscles have considerably weakened since I used to push those kids around all the time. Probably a little of both.

Anyway, I'm struggling about ten minutes into this walk and have to have Bennett hop out and walk about five blocks to give me a bit of a break. He eventually gets back in and we make it to the post office only to discover that the world's smallest post office (anyone ever been to the one near Murphy Street by the train station?) is busier than usual--about seven people in line, which shows you just how tiny this place is--and doesn't even have the space for me to park the stroller inside. Well, the boys are antsy to see the trains anyway, so I park them outside the main door, about twenty feet from where I'd be, to watch the trains while I wait in line. I can see them through the glass doors and use that to my advantage once the trains leave and B. starts pushing Eli. I shake my finger at him and he stops doing it, but of course by this time E. is squirming and ready to get out of the stroller. I know he'll survive, especially since I'm at the front of the line by now, but apparently someone else interprets his complaints a different way.

I come out to find some mom, whose kids are parked in a minivan near the boys, talking to them and offering them chicken nuggets (a little weird but I can tell she is just trying to be nice). She says, "Oh, are these your kids? We thought they were abandoned." Okay, let me say that no more than ten minutes have passed here, minutes in which I've had visual confirmation of them, minutes in which if you bothered to look inside the post office you would've seen me signaling and waving and, yes, disciplining them. This mom goes on to tell me that some other woman who just left might have called the police to come get them.

Sure enough, about ten minutes later as we're walking toward the park a cop car pulls over and the officer gets out to ask if I left my kids outside the post office. I explain what happened and he says he was just checking to make sure there weren't any abandoned kids. That was about it; he didn't seem bothered and didn't chastise me for leaving them in the stroller or anything. Just climbed back in his police car and went on his way.

Now, maybe this woman was well-intentioned and just sincerely concerned about my kids, but if that's the case why didn't she stick her head in the tiny post office and ask if they belonged to anyone in there? Wouldn't that have been a little more logical than immediately calling the cops? Another weird thing is I never even saw her. I saw people coming and going and saying hi to my kids, but I was watching them and did not notice one particularly concerned woman hanging around them, which means either she jumped to a very quick conclusion or she was just being nasty and, as Whitney put it, trying to teach some mom a lesson. Either way, I was bugged.

It brings up the whole issue of other people trying to parent your kids in what they perceive as the only and/or best way to parent. In talking to friends at the park, I realized that all of us have experienced this in one way or another (a lot of those experiences happened at Target, for some reason) and all take issue with it to some degree. Sometimes I wonder if it's a Bay area phenomenon--we're so densely populated here that it's hard to go anywhere without being close to other people, and when you have kids you can't really hide in the shadows and do your shopping unnoticed. You're very visible as are your parenting choices, which makes you vulnerable to others' opinions and judgments. Maybe not, though. Maybe people everywhere expect a pregnant mother with two active and heavy toddlers to hold them on her hips--so that they don't tear up all the mail slips and empty packages in the office--while balancing Christmas packages on her head and her wallet on her foot, keep said toddlers quiet and happily occupied as she waits in line, and of course remain patient, cheerful, and utterly calm until it's her turn.