Strollerderby : strangers

Stranger Comes out of Family's Attic on Christmas

JeanneSager — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:28:00 GMT

Here's another reason to stay home for the holidays: you never know who might be dropping in when you go out. Like the strange man living in the attic of one Pennsylvania family.

The Luzerne County family woke up, opened presents and then went out to visit family on the holiday. When they came home, they noticed a bunch of items missing. Cops came, took a report and left, and the family went out for some more Christmas celebrating.

But when they came home, there were more items missing - among them Mom's toothbrush, their young daughter's purple blanket, candles and a laptop. It was Grandpa, who owns the duplex where the family lives, who suggested police check out the attic crawl space. That's how police found Stanley Carter, the twenty-one-year-old who was supposed to be staying with friends next door. Police say he had been living in the family's attic for at least week, slipping downstairs to steal clothing, food and other items from all rooms of the house.

He's now in jail, and the family is relieved that Goldilocks is gone. I'm still creeped out that this guy was slipping down into the little girl's room - by looks of this video interview with Mom, she couldn't be more than six or seven. The girl's room looks like a typical messy kid room though - so who knows how long it would have taken to notice anything was gone if he hadn't gone for the big stuff!

Image:

Stop Sending Palin Baby Presents

Teen Has Cancer and Lives in a Car

Jersey Dad Fakes His Own Son's Death for Money

Couple Asks Internet to Name their Baby

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Jason and Ann Morrison have far more faith in their fellow humans than I do. The couple is expecting a baby and have turned to an unlikely group of people to decide the name of their first child: complete strangers. Jason is a Google engineer who has set up an online poll with 17 name choices—plus, and here’s where it gets scary, a write-in option.

The Morrisons are aware of the margin of error inherent in this naming technique. As Jason writes on his blog, “This is a difficult decision that will have a huge impact on the life of an innocent human being. Naturally, we are turning to random Internet strangers for help.” So far, more than 4,500 random Internet strangers have opted to weigh in. (If you want to join the unknown, opinionated masses, vote here.)

Let’s hope these random strangers have a bit more discriminating tastes than the 150,000 people who voted to name a baby whale on the Greenpeace site last year. The winner, by an overwhelming margin, was Mister Splashy Pants.

Photo: The Sydney Morning Herald

Should You Intervene When Strangers Hit Their Kids?

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The other day while walking in the park, I passed by a disturbing scene. An enraged mother was marching after her daughter, shouting, “You are going to get hit! You are going to get hit!” Her daughter looked about three years-old, and she was bawling. After trying in vain to run away from her mother, the little girl covered her head with her hands as her mother caught up to her and made good on her threat.

The mother’s anger was so violent that, as I walked away from this sad scene, even I felt a little frightened. I could only imagine how the woman's rage had affected her young daughter. As I walked home, I felt completely helpless. I wondered if I had done the right thing to simply walk away. How else, I asked myself, could I have responded? I felt pretty certain that alerting one of the park's police officers wouldn’t have helped; most likely the only outcome would have been to make both the mother and her daughter feel even more freaked out. And telling the mother not to hit her child would have only increased her rage—who was I to tell her how to raise her children?

I thought of a story my mom had told me recently about a friend of hers. While walking in a supermarket, a man had seen a mother forcefully hit her small child, who kept reaching out for food items from her seat in the grocery cart. The man gently approached the mother, and made a sympathetic comment to the effect of, “I know how hard it can be with young children. It feels like they just won’t listen.” As the man spoke about his own difficulties with parenting, the mother started crying. “I know I shouldn’t hit her,” she said, “and I try not to. But it's so hard.” They spoke for a long time about other ways to discipline children. The mother was at her wit’s end, and really needed someone to simply ask if she was okay.

I hope the next time I encounter a child being mistreated, I am brave enough to try out this method of honest engagement. Has anyone ever tried confronting an enraged parent in this, or any other, way?

Photo: Spiritual Reseach Foundation