It was nothing really, a skinned knee on somebody else’s kid and a few uncomfortable minutes that have probably already been forgotten by everybody else involved. A brief interruption in an otherwise unremarkable afternoon at the park, one that probably played out hundreds of times over that day in hundreds of other playgrounds around the world.
My daughter and I had gotten pretty used to having the place to ourselves, few others foolish enough to be swinging and climbing when there were perfectly fine activities to be done in the comforts of a warm home, but it had finally gotten warmer and the place was packed. It only took a few minutes to find another dad that I knew and we stood off to the side, talking sports and futilely trying to keep track of our girls as they chased each other around in some sort of tag / hide and seek mashup that they seemed to have chosen precisely because of how difficult this quickly became.
Amidst the screaming and laughing we soon heard the other sound that these days inevitably bring, the sound of a child crying. Not far from where we were standing a little boy tripping over his own feet and going sprawling, the sort of injury that is usually healed by nothing more than a parent telling them that they are OK. A quick glance in his direction and we resumed monitoring our own offspring.
Unfortunately this particular child’s parent was preoccupied elsewhere with an even smaller sibling and after several minutes of us joining the lad in looking around for somebody headed his way we did absolutely nothing.
We did nothing, were just as relieved as he was when his dad did show up to calm him down, and then sheepishly tried to pretend that we hadn’t seen anything. It was embarrassing and awkward and afterwards both admitted that the main reason that neither of us had gone over to check on him was because we were guys.
We weren’t scared for our safety, incidents like the one in Lakeland, Florida where a guy was beaten for helping a lost little girl find her parents still thankfully rare, but we were uncomfortable. For all the progress that has been made towards recognizing fathers as just as nurturing and capable as mothers there is still little doubt in my mind that there would have been a different reaction to seeing two strange women brushing off wood chips and soothing a stranger’s crying child than two middle aged men, regardless of the
Dads Don’t Babysit T-Shirt that I was wearing.
I’m not sure why this is, if it will ever change, or how much of it might just be in our heads. Maybe the frazzled looking other dad would have thanked us and explained that he had another kid that had fallen off a different slide at the exact same time. We’ll never know.
My daughter is older, needs me less, and usually has no idea how closely I’m watching her but if there is ever a time when I’m in the bathroom or fetching my sunglasses from the truck and something happens during that brief period when I can’t go running immediately over I hope that somebody checks on her.
Moms or dads.
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Previously Published on thirstydaddy.com
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