Aside from my railings about how people react to a broken down car with a woman sitting alone in, I have further evidence that the milk of human kindness has dried up. My friend, Wendy, works for a national department store. She was fairly recently promoted (woo woo) to some kind of department head or some such. At any rate, at such stores, when a child goes missing, there is a "Code Adam" issued. I know from first hand experience that this is not pleasant...for moms, dads, or employees. However, Wendy had one the other day and while she is off searching for a missing three year old, customers are complaining about lines being backed up at check outs and several actually wanted her to do price checks for them. Like she said, the child was found hiding in a changing room, but what if that kid had been kdnapped and found dead a week later? Would those people have the decency to feel ashamed of how they had reacted or would they be more like, "I remember that, it took me forever to get out of that store!"
Now, I'm a true child of the 80's. Best and worst years of my life. I wouldn't change that. I especially wouldn't change my mother and I watching a movie called "Adam". To this day, that movie terrifies me. The fact that it's true, thinking of my kids running loose in a store countless times, and how there never used to be such a thing as a 'Code Adam'. some poor little boy had to be kidnapped and decapitated for that to happen. After all, I'm sure the people in the store when little Adam Walsh went missing tried oh so hard to help find him. I'm sure several did, actually. I'm also positive that the larger number didn't much give a shit one way or the other. "Not my kid" they think. Or worse.
Frankly, I'm ashamed of us all. 99% of us are guilty of this type of thing, including me. Why? Have we become so numb, so busy? That may be part of it. I admit that if I think overly long about stuff like this, I have panic attacks when I take my kids out of the house, so a bit of it must be there in order to survive. I also admit to being overly focused on my own selfish needs when I'm in stores. I don't go shopping in order to make friends. Good thing, too, from the way people act, but that's another story. Usually, when I'm out shopping, it's for stuff we need and I always have an extensive To-Do list running through my head urging me to hurry the fuck up, Mabel, and get out of here. So much for all the time technology is supposed to save (also another story). Between these two areas, I admit, I'm often not paying much attention to anything else and it makes it all that much easier to just block out people who might need help and lets in impatience and all that. Piss poor excuses though. And I'm sure that too many of us use the same ones. How sad. How unbelievable sad.
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