Leaving the grocery store, I saw a woman ahead of me with a small girl, 3 or 4. The woman's arms were tightly wrapped around a large sack of groceries. The little girl scampered beside her, unsecured, as they crossed the parking lot to a beat up old pickup truck, pale yellow and spackle. The back wall of the cab had been removed, and a bench seat set in the truck bed behind the cab.
The woman opened the passenger side door. I was startled when she carefully eased the groceries into the seat and fastened the seat belt. Then she picked up the little girl and lifted her into the pickup bed to sit on the bench seat, unsecured. The woman got into the truck and drove away.
And I wondered about choices, priorities, and different lifestyles.
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3 comments:
I wonder the very same things. When I was less cynical, I used to point out the folly of their actions to these people, in the hope of educating them.
I've come to the conclusion that the majority of those people refuse to be educated.
I'm torn.
I think of all the rides I took in the backs of pickups at that age, without a seat at all, sitting on the edge of the bed or the wheel well hump.
I'm 35 now, and I guess it's been 15 years since I've ridden more than a few hundred yards in the bed of a pickup.
I ticket parents who don't buckle in their kids.
I believe that some of those kids' safety may well have been insured by my enforcing the seatbelt law.
But groceries fall to the floor off bench seats if not buckled in. Kids usually right themselves.
Any fool can see that...
As one did.
I remember seeing a family in a little two-seater tracker. Father driving, baby in the passenger seat buckled in securely, mom in the back in the pouring down rain.
Bless that family.
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