Kick

'[Today was a good day. My back is slowly getting better and I've been walking more. Go me.

Started working on the holiday gifts, we are mostly doing photo gifts for the Grandparents and the like.My laptop is still on the fritz so I have to upload from my laptop to the external harddrive then from the hard drive threw my mothers desktop onto the host site that I can make these wonderful photo gifty things.

. . . . . . .what can I say, I'm stuborn.

So after Hubs got home from work, we went out to get a birthday present for a little boy :) We went to one of my favorite stores for Little Man and found something cute, but the time spent in the store was less then fun and possibly a precursor for what was to come. Needless to say we were the only ones in the store holding or carrying their child. Every other child in the store was in a stroller or walking around. No biggie I guess, but some part of me always feels bad for the children that aren't held as much. Not passing judgment here, just feeling bad.

Anywho, we finally decided on a gift, for some reason it's harder picking things out for others then my child, I guess I'm worried if they will like it. And then I started looking threw things for Little Man. He has been growing like a weed since going gluten free, three lbs and two inches in a month. He has skipped nine months almost completely so we are looking at 18 months size clothing for winter. While I was looking threw body suits and what not, a father was constantly picking up his sons sippy cup. The little boy kept throwing it.

Now I know the kid was asking for attention. And the only way he was getting it was throwing that cup onto the ground. So I watched.

The child threw, dad scolded, gave it back to him then as soon as the father was out of sight the cup was thrown again. You get the picture. So dad got fed up with playing the pick up game and put it in his pocket. The child now without a way to get his fathers attention began to scream and throw a fit.

Instead of trying to figure out what was wrong, the parent immediately scolded the little boy, he was about 15 months or so. . .Now I know that many of you could be shaking your heads, 'well, Lynn, were you there for that long? How could you know?' Valid point, but I was watching all this for about a half an hour.

So now Mom is bothered because she can't shop in peace and she gives Dad a scowl to which Dad says some pretty repugnant shit to his child. At that point Hubs and I looked at each other and we called our shopping trip short in that store. On the way out we cuddled Little Man a little closer, he was sick of being worn on my back so Hubs was carrying him. Then we made our way to another store and on the way we saw something horrifying.

A mother kicked her daughter.

Let me say that again.

A MOTHER KICKED HER DAUGHTER.

Let me walk you through it. You know, really there isn't much to describe. We were in Franklin Mills Mall on a Friday night, so it was fairly busy. We for some reason both looked to our right, possibly it was the toddler laughing or being a toddler. She couldn't of been more then 18 months old.

She was holding her Mothers hand and all of a sudden, the mother yanked on her hand and kicked her child as if it was a bad dog. I'm not talking field goal style kick here, I'm talking out of anger, boot to the kid.

. . . .

. . .

Here's the kicker. No one did anything.Pun intended.

. . .

. . .

No one stopped and stared, save my husband and I. No one shook their heads. Hubs and I looked about trying to see if we imagined it, if it was just a prank. . .but no. And then . . .she did it again.

She kicked the child again.

I then marched up to the nearest security guard and told him what had happened. I don't know what happened after that, because Hubs took me out of there as I was really upset.

I probably should of called CPS or the Police. But I wasn't in a safe place.

You see, I worked at Franklin Mills for a bit there. I used to work at a childrens clothing chain. I worked for that chain for over eight years. And during those eight years, I saw some fucked up shit.

I saw a child defecate in a changing room.
I saw children slapped, beat and screamed at, ignored, lost, crying, broken. I saw it all. And not knowing better, I thought this was how it was supposed to be.

Why is that? Why do we think it's okay to hit kids? Why do we ignore it when people do something vicious to babies?

I finally put my foot down one night, there was a mother with a toddler crying his head off. He was probably hungry or tired or done. But she kept shopping because she had a coupon. So a friend was trying to distract the little guy and was playing with him until the Mother got frustrated and called out across the store:
"Bring that little shit back here so I can beat some sense into him." She then took off her belt. I thought she was joking, it wasn't funny, but people say the shittiest things when upset. But then I heard 'CRACK' and a loud scream.

I walked over to her and told her she can't do that here. And she said: "This is my fucking kid, he came OUT my pussy and I'll do what I want to it."

I shit you not. I can't make up this stuff.

I then explained to her that I wasn't paid to listen to people curse to me, I asked her to leave the store. She refused.

I called security. They REMOVED her. She wanted my name, I wrote it on a business card. She then wanted my FULL name and I declined. Told her I was the only 'Lynn' here.

Two days later my District Manager came and asked me to apologize to the woman. "Lynn, if you were offended by this womans parenting decisions, you should of offered her the fitting room so she could discipline her son there."

Again, I shit you not. 

I refused to apologize.

I just would like to know. . .when we as a people thought it was okay to do things like this, and when we became desensitized to it.