Today’s trip to our local park was a real eye opener for
me. Besides being uncomfortable at
the masses of people there, I realized mid-trip that I have watched entirely
too many episodes of Criminal Minds.
Mind you, this fact is reminded to me weekly by my hubby when I
regale the paranoia I encounter almost nightly after dark, but today I believe
I brought it to a whole new level – a level in which it was possible that
police could have been called had I not controlled myself.
When we arrived at the park, my heart sank (like normal)
when I saw how many Toledo citizens agreed with me that the mild temperatures
created the perfect park day. On
top of the mass conglomeration of kids and their parents, there were also more
dogs than I was comfortable with.
Well, in all fairness, one dog is more than I’m comfortable with, but
that’s beside the point. Trudging
across the grass (too long and filled with clover so thus, filled with bees),
only one son was excited to play so we thought we’d ditch the people and go for
walk in the woods.
The trail to the woods was littered with a few solitary
walkers. I kept the kids close and
found every reason to leave the trail toward the park side whenever those
creepy, smiling hikers came close (read: single people are always suspect to
me). Yes, we even explored the
inside of a grill to keep from interacting with what I was sure was a
soon-to-be abduction attempt.
As we approached a not completely hidden fork in the trail,
two men stood talking smack in the middle of the intersection. The mother and BAU profiler in me was
convinced this was all a ploy to make me (yes, I was sure they singled me out!)
think they were just normal, nature-lovin’ folks, mindin’ their own business
until BAM! One reaches out, grabs
a child by the arm and tosses him into the van barreling out of the woods. Just like that, in a literal blink of
an eye, my world would be over.
Staring at them from afar (yeah, I gotta be able to describe them down
to the five o’clock shadow pattern) but looking down as we passed them, I
fought back the hyperventilation flirting with my lungs and pushed on. The boys, completely unaware of the
dire situation entirely within my head, tripped over each other, laughed and
pulled on my hands when . . .
“Hi boys! Is
your mom taking you for a walk?”
Breathe, breathe, breathe. That man, that certain molester/murderer/vagrant, just engaged
my children! I forced a smile void
of eye contact and pushed them on – literally, I had to place my hands on their
backs in puuuuush. My head
twitched to the side every two seconds or so, looking to make sure he wasn’t
following us. He wasn’t, but I
still had my hand on my phone all the same. Just in case.
This encounter today made me question: at one point is it
okay to call the cops? My
irrationality was overwhelming my sanity, which knew deep down that nothing bad
was going to happen; but my body was in fight or flight mode anyway. With a mother’s instinct, when should
one ignore it and chalk it up to paranoia?
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