AND THEN THEY WONDER WHY THINGS HAPPEN

Yesterday, while I was walking from the parking lot of the high school track I run I saw a little girl, maybe four or five years old, sitting by herself crying.  At first, I thought, her parents were around and I would just walk by, but this little toe headed cute little girl looked just too sad to pass by.  I glanced around and nobody was nearby.

I thought to myself, that maybe this little girl is lost.  Nobody around but some ladies doing their boot camp exercises with a bunch of small children way on the other side of the track.

I asked the little girl what was wrong and through her tears and crying she said something to the effect that she was cold and didn't want to run.  At that point I believed she was with the girls doing the boot camp routine with a bunch of other little ones.

I told her that running is good for her and she would soon get warmed up if she ran.  I walked on the track making sure I would see if the ladies doing the boot camp exercises were, in fact, her caretakers.

I ran around to where they were and asked if they knew the little girl and the mother said, "She does her own thing and didn't want to run because she was cold.  I told her to run to get warm, but she didn't want to."  They said they were keeping an eye on her, but from my seeing what was going on, they could have cared less what the little girl was doing.  They called to her to come to them, but I don't even think the little girl could hear them because she was doing her own thing at the time.

In the meantime, I saw men as well as women entering the track.  The little girl was sitting right near the parking lot.  Anyone of those people could have easily grabbed that little girl and taken her away.  What were these girls thinking?  In today's world, would people do such a thing.  I highly doubt I would.  I wouldn't even leave a dog on a leash so far away from me.

I thought about telling them about a time when I lived in Southern California and I used to run in the morning at a high school track and then one morning I saw two police cars there.  I was tempted to ask them why they were there and then on the news they said there was a rape on that track that morning.  What a rude awakening that was.  And this happened in the late 1980s to early 1990 when things weren't as bad as they are today.  I didn't say anything to them about that, but every time I ran around the track to where the little girl was, I checked on her to see if she was OK.

After about a half an hour the little girl was with the rest of the group.