Thursday, June 29, 2006

Parenting Permit?

Yesterday while driving our ambulance around and looking for trouble, we pulled up next to a fairly new looking car at some traffic lights, two adults in the front and one clearly unrestrained kid of about 3 standing on the back seat looking back seat at us. Being a complete do-gooder, smart-ass, know-it-all, who really can't mind his own business, I wound down the window to politely suggest that a seatbelt and maybe a booster seat would be a good option for the little guy in the back seat. Thats when I noticed another smaller child sitting on mum's lap in the front seat. No it wasn't Britany Spears, sorry. I could see from my high moral standpoint, or as I prefer to call it; the elevated cab of the ambulance, that both mum and child were completely unrestrained too.

Well boy was I set back on the right path - what was I thinking by trying to impose my snooty value judgements on these fine parents? I was given a right royal serving and told to go elsewhere. I was chastened yes, but still I hadn't quite learned my lesson and figured I let the Police deal with it.... 'cause although I had a uniform and some flashing lights and stuff, I was apparently a "wanna-be cop who can't mind his own business". Despite an afternoon phone call to the police, I was outsmarted once again because the vehicle was not even registered.

4 comments:

Alison said...

Naturally they'll be the first blaming the government, police, ambulance, hospitals, everyone when they have an accident and the kids are injured.

*sigh*

caramaena said...

Stupid people. And Alison is right, if there's an accident, they'll blame everyone but themselves.

I was in a car accident when I was a kid - back then there weren't laws about wearing seatbelts (I don't know if that car even had them in the back seat).

I was thrown through the back windscreen headfirst (the car flipped, I'm told). 30+ years later I still have no memory of the actual accident - but I do have lots of scars all over my head (no shaving my hair on bluey days for me). My mum and dad didn't blame anyone but themselves and made sure that the next car they got had seatbelts for everyone and we wore them.

I was lucky.

rob said...

ouch - sounds like you were really lucky. Not many people get ejected from a rolling vehicle and live to talk about it!

Anonymous said...

You'll have the last laugh when you're scraping their remains from the carriageway into a big black bag