I mean, she was literally negligent in this case. But I agree that this will be used to imply that she is generally negligent, which this incident in no way proves per se.
I have an idea! I’m thinking some sort of harness and tether you can use when you’re in a busy public place where your small animal might get itself into trouble. I shall call it…a leash.
Laugh all you want. It works.
I have been told that when used for children, the preferred term is “care lead.”
Is she, though? The utter crapfest that is a modern airport, especially one as huge and complicated as Hartsfield, is a maze of horrors for the people who have to navigate it.
Year after year, more layers of shitty human interaction design and unnecessary infrastructure is piled on top of the previous layer of awfulness, until we’ve reached the point where the artificial monster eats babies.
One thing TPTB should do with the next round of infrastructure investment is re-imagine the commercial airport, and air travel in general, to be designed around the passengers. The current system is virtually designed to torture passengers, but we’re so used to the whip, an extra couple of lashes is barely noticeable.
/rant
No, but she was charged an excess baggage fee by the airline.
Also… new Disneyland ride in 3,2,1.
Also, glad the child was OK.
Huh. Maybe the conveyor belt needs a human detector.
The mother told police she looked away from her son “for one second” and he disappeared.
Funny how it always seems to be “for one second”.
That surprises me, Gully.
“The whole point of extravagance is to act like a fool and feel like a fool, but enjoy it.” Alfred Bester (The Star’s My Destination)
Good thing the kid didn’t try that in Denver, he mighta ended up in the sub-sub-basement with the reptilians, or worse, somehow gotten into the tunnel that stretches all the way to St. Louis!!
Hey, I’m no fan of airports, but operating a boarding kiosk is no more demanding than operating an ATM. If this mother let her kid wander off while she was making a withdrawal, and the kid walked into traffic, we would say that she was negligent. Right?
I get you, but the check-in area at an airport is way more chaotic than an ATM. I also don’t take luggage to an ATM. I can picture her juggling luggage, toddler, ID, boarding pass, the printed luggage sticker, etc.
I can’t imagine taking my eyes off a child in my care in that environment, even “just for a second”, but I see your point. Like I said, we can agree that there are few less pleasant places to exist than in an airport in a large city.
Haha! Uh… actually, as a small kid, I would often wander off like this so my parents, after several episodes of freaking out about a “lost” child, stuck a belt on me and connected a leash to the belt. That was in the 60’s. (I still managed to get away sometimes. It’s not that I was malicious. The world was such a fascinating place and I wanted to explore it.)
I suspect it was one second of looking at a phone, which for some reason always takes me 100 seconds.
That’s what my mother and her siblings did with her youngest brother, who was a real escape artist. They put a belt on him, added the leash to the belt, and connected the other end of the leash to the clothesline in their backyard, so he had plenty of room to run and play… but it kept him in the yard where he belonged.
A nosy neighbor called the cops on them, saying it was abuse. The police arrived to check, took one look at the setup, listened to the explanation… and told the neighbor to quit being such a busybody.
That kid was the youngest of five… with four people watching, they still had trouble keeping track of him!
(Maybe I should remind my uncle of that story the next time I see him… 
)
My mother used a dog harness and leash on me… a belt would have been too easy to get out off.
People who criticize never had to deal with an ADHD kid with no fear of things like traffic, heights or enclosed spaces. Especially since she had two kids to try and wrangle.
My mom had a story about me too (and trust me, she was extremely protective of me). It was Christmas time, and we were shopping at a department store. She was looking at a display, reached down automatically to hold my hand, took a few steps away, and looked down… only to see it wasn’t me she was walking with, but a little boy. The other mother (who’d been right next to us and had automatically taken my hand) hadn’t gotten too far away, so we all found each other again… no harm was done. (I was way too young to remember any of this, but I believe it.)
No matter how careful a parent may be, kids can wander off in a heartbeat. I’m sorry the child got hurt, but I’m very grateful nothing worse happened… and I do feel sympathy for the mother. Parenting isn’t easy!
That contrasts with “a NY minute”, that being about a second (or less).
“The interval between the traffic light turning green and the taxi driver behind hitting his horn.” 
