Kathy Benjamin
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They say it takes a village to raise a child, but nowadays everyone is way too busy drinking pumpkin-spice-flavored everything and reading dinosaur erotica to spare 30 seconds on someone else's child. And in many cases, they don't even notice what their own kid is up to.
This all adds up to Baby's Day Out accidentally being re-enacted multiple times every single damn day. Here are five of the more recent screw-ups.
When you're a kid, there's nothing better than leaving school early. That might be why a 6-year-old in England didn't say anything when she was called out of class so a random old man could take her to the doctor.
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Keep in mind that this was kindergarten, so who knows what Bueller-esque crap she'll pull when she hits real school.
The supervision fails were legion. First, when the elderly gentleman came to pick up his granddaughter, he only gave the staff her first name. When a child in the same grade with the same name was called to the office instead, the really-shouldn't-be-driving-if-he-can't-recognize-his-own-relatives pensioner took her to the doctor.
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"Quick, get in the car or we'll be late."
Then, proving that socialized medicine will kill us all, the doctor failed to notice that his patient was a completely different human being than expected. It wasn't until the child told her parents that anyone knew something had gone wrong ... and even then they didn't believe her until the clinic confirmed that she'd been there.
But even if children are with old men who are actually related to them, things can go terribly wrong. A grandfather in Dallas drove his 7- and 8-year-old grandkids to a park two blocks from their house but managed to get lost on the return trip. This may have been because he forgot his cellphone ... or perhaps because he suffers from memory loss.
Whatever the reason, the grandfather only realized he was lost when he stopped to ask for directions. Three days later. In Wisconsin.
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"Excuse me, miss. Do you know where the interstate is? Miss?"
According to the children's father, the kids weren't too bothered by the trip, probably because they're at an age where 95 percent of the things adults do make absolutely no sense anyway.
A 17-year-old Oregon student recently complained to his parents that his school bus driver kept falling asleep. Because we live in a world where a picture is worth a thousand words but a million views on YouTube are fucking proof, his father refused to believe him until he saw some video evidence.
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"Great, now I just want a notarized affidavit from a forensic videographer proving that this wasn't doctored and we're good to go."
Despite the fact that numerous other students had complained about the same thing, the driver wasn't fired until he was finally filmed snoozing. (All the parents and teachers presumably assumed that "falling asleep at the wheel" was a slang term for a dance craze nobody over the age of 40 could do with dignity.)
Nidaa Abbasi was expecting a fun day out when she lined up for the "Robin Hood" mini-marathon in Nottingham, England. (Once you have a good branding idea, you stick with it for the next 800 years, no matter how tenuous the connection, damn it.)
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"I don't know. Just say we're 'running from the rich to give to the poor' or some shit."
At just 1.5 miles long, the race was going to be easy for the 14-year-old. Too easy. That's probably why she didn't notice anything was wrong until she passed a sign saying that she had just hit the 4-mile mark.
The 80 children participating in the mini-marathon (some as young as 8) had been following a car along their route, but when the car broke down, the adults in charge went to pieces and somehow directed the children onto the course of the 13-mile half marathon happening at the same time.
And this wasn't one or two people making a mistake: 700 staff lined the marathon course and should have noticed when dozens of exhausted children were suddenly competing against full-grown athletes. Most of the kids eventually gave up, but Abbasi shrugged and punched out another 9.5 miles for the heck of it.
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We assume this led to tons of nonsensical "Running Hood" headlines in terrible local papers.
In our post-9/11 world, airports are seemingly on high alert 24/7. While security slip-ups happen from time to time, there's no way that everyone involved could mess up so badly that a 9-year-old ends up on a plane alone without a ticket, right?
Well, that just happened over the weekend. Yes, the boy went through all of the airport's security checkpoints and even managed to get a free meal by running off when the bill arrived. Then he got on a plane bound for Las Vegas and no one noticed anything amiss until halfway through the flight.
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"I don't care what the manifest says; that is not Dr. Harold Tanaka. Call it a gut feeling."
Given his string of maniac good luck, we're pretty sure that the Luxor Sphinx would've sprung to life and become the boy's magical new best friend if those killjoys in Protective Services hadn't intervened.
Kathy wrote a very funny book, and you can buy it here and here.
