Don't Steal Babies

One expects when shopping in Wal-Mart to have their sense of taste threatened by the hordes of hideous, lead-tainted home furnishing and clothing lines. You might also find your personal space susceptible at the sheer amount of people wandering around 2 feet wide aisles filled with cases of soup or brutally obese individuals riding in their diabetic Big Wheels. You may not expect to have a security guard intimidate you for toting around your infant while perusing the clustered aisles for random Chinese trinkets.

Meet Stacy. Stacy writes:

The next thing I know a security guard is asking me to hand him Ava. Evidentally someone in the store had their baby in a cart and someone rolled the cart away...

They are trying to tell me that Ava is not my child. She started fussing so I began taking her out of the seat. The whole time this security guard is asking me to "give him the baby". FUCK YOU! There was no way I was handing her over! I tried to walk away, leaving her car seat, the diaper bag, even my wallet...they blocked me! I am screaming for them to get the fuck away from me. I start crying, sobbing, just holding Ava near me. Everytime the security guard put his hands near her I shifted away. Ava is screaming at the top of her lungs by this time. I am screaming to get a manager.

The entire ordeal is detailed on Stacy's blog.

In the internet realm, there seems to be two schools of thought with this story. The first is that the store team overreacted and threatened a young mother who only then turned crazy hysterical to protect her child. The other camp feels that Stacy was being selfish and overreacted to the situation.

I would have to fall squarely in the first category. Having worked in retail, I can certainly understand the need to protect a child who may have wandered away or been taken by being diligent to ensure no one else takes that child out of the store. However, this situation certainly could have been handled with much more grace and tact as opposed to simply demanding a mother give up her child as the child could be the missing child in question. In all probability, there were other parents and young children in the store that day as well. Were those customers treated differently, did Stacy really overreact, or is this just the first we are hearing about it?

Yes, she acted in a rash manner by trying to grab the child out of the seat, leaving her belongings and just making a run for it. Such behavior could lead one to believe she had something to hide. As in nature, though, a mother will go to great lengths to protect her young.

As a parent myself, I would be highly irate, probably throw down a few choice words you won't find in Disney movies, and possibly escalate to a physical altercation if need be. If that were the case though, due to my scrawny stature and lack of physical prowess, I would probably be on the wrong end of a taser, foaming at the mouth and writhing on the floor of the local Wal-Mart.

Parenting will certainly screw you up for life in many, many ways.