I'd love to be snarky about this, but honestly, I can totally see it happening: you're boarding a train at a busy station, eager to get away from the in-laws after being threatened with never having sex again if you don't go this year without complaining, and you've got the luggage and the tickets, and hello, is there a bar car on this train? and the baby in the stroller, and people are getting on are we going to miss the train? Did you get the bag with all the baby's stuff in it? Okay, I'll get the heavy one and you get that stupid box with the crystal in it that your Uncle Ed insisted on giving us NOW instead of, you know, shipping it, and there's all our bags, count them one, two, three, four, and the box-with-the-crystal, and the baby's bag, and the—OH SHIT! You got the baby, didn't you? I thought you had the baby! You thought I had the baby??! WHERE'S THE BABY???!
So I forget stuff like my keys all the time. I forgot to buckle my son's seat belt once when coming home from taking his two-day-old jaundiced dehydrated sister to the doctor. I forget what people told me, what I said, what I ate last week or sometimes yesterday. So even though a part of me wants to be all judgy like HOW COULD YOU FORGET YOUR FREAKING BABY??, there's another part that totally understands, and both parts are just really really glad nothing bad happened.
So the baby was left strapped into his stroller at a new Brunswick New Jersey train station when both parents boarded thinking the other was getting the baby. Yeah, yeah, total lack of communication (likely they haven't spoken ever since she got pregnant and he saw his life flash before his eyes), but as the train pulled out of the station at least they had the presence of mind to go OH SHIT and tell the conductor who was able to notify police, who then kept an eye on the baby until Dad (clearly never having sex again at this point) could hop off the train at the first stop and take a cab back to the station while Mom silently stewed in her seat all the way home.
End of story, except they'll forever be known as The Couple That Left The Baby Behind.
Photos: commons.wikimedia.org
