On the front page of the local paper today was a story about how a toddler was almost hit by a car. Not that a child was hit by a car. Might have been hit. I had moral outrage, mostly because I read freerangekids.com.

I found out that we could email a letter to the editor. I wrote a strongly worded letter.  They’ll be sorry that they made it easy to write.  I have a coworker who sees conspiracies everywhere. She says I’m going to be her letter writer now.

Here were my points:

1.  The kid was nearby at the time that a truck crashed into the post office. She was not injured. Nothing at all happened to her. This is not news.

2.  This is the second time in six weeks that a vehicle has hit the post office. Here is your headline. The post office was injured-  not some random child.

3.  People overprotect their kids to a ridiculous degree and this doesn’t help. The grandmother who was with the kid was berating herself for letting the kid walk instead of carrying her. What if she hadn’t stopped to talk to someone?  Then she would have been in front of the truck and would have been killed.  It was so over the top and melodramatic about all the what ifs that we have staged dramatic readings of it today at work. Seriously it sounds like you should wrap your kid in bubble wrap and carry her over your shoulder until she is at least 25.

What I didn’t add into my letter:

Why is it that people act all horrified when a kid is involved?  You know what I mean.

“Sixty two Americans were killed today in a bombing INCLUDING A BABY!!!! “ 

“A Nobel Peace Prize winner, a nun, and two transplant surgeons were killed when their plane crashed. Most tragically a child on the ground was killed along with her entire extended family.”

Makes me nuts. Children are not more valuable than adults. I would argue that they are less valuable than productive members of society.

It must be a slow news day today because I got a response in a few minutes. This person agreed with me and said that the uberhysterical grandmother had called and suggested the story.

I happened to have to go to that post office at lunch. Nothing happened to me. I did almost witness a fight between a customer and the clerk. I should call the paper. I could have been slapped by mistake if it had escalated and gotten physical….