What is it with parents?! And what is it with people in general?!

Last night, I went to Walmart for some exercise (a walk in the air conditioning) and some shopping. For the fifth time in two or three months, I found a small child (all of them 4 or younger) wandering around, scared, alone,and hollering for, "Mommy!" For the fifth time in two or three months, I was the ONLY adult who stopped to help the child.

Who would allow a two, three, or four year old child to walk off, unsupervised, in Walmart or a big grocery store?! (Did I mention I'm in a city with approximately 115,000 people?) Why weren't these youngsters in the cart or holding Mommy or Daddy's hand? And why on earth hadn't someone else stopped to help them?!

Out of these five kids, only 2 of them were able to tell me Mommy's name... With those two, I convinced the kids to go up to the service desk with me (I didn't touch them...didn't want someone to think I was running off with their kid!), and had their mothers paged. The other three times, I gave the kids a lesson in what to do if they got lost in a store - stay in one place, so their mommy can come find them. And then we stood there together and waited. We'd talk about their names, my kids, what color was on that sign...whatever it took to keep them calm until their parent arrived.

You know the kicker? Not a single one of the parents bothered to say thank you. Or even give a nod. Or even acknowledge the fact that I was even there.

Sometimes, people scare me.

On another topic

Dentists scare me, too. I'm going in today for a root canal. If you'll recall, last time I went in for a root canal, they did a very complicated cavity, instead. No such luck this time, I'm afraid. *sigh*

My father is going to be here sometime today. He's driving down from NY where he was visiting his parents. He'll spend the night with us, and when Alex gets out of school tomorrow, he'll be snatching him up and taking him to IL with him. Perrin and Darcy's biological mom will be driving out early tomorrow morning from TN to pick them up right after Perrin gets out of school. We've offered to let her stay the night so she doesn't get back on the road, exhausted, but we don't know yet whether she is going to take us up on it. So either tomorrow or early Saturday, our two week vacation (without kids) begins!