Educating My Daughter on the Evil That Lurks Behind the Emporium-Capwell Doors

I wish you could have seen my face when the waitress handed me the folded up piece of paper from the cook behind the line. He had been flirting with me across the way the entire time I sat at lunch with my grandmother.

I was flattered, in shock — and eleven years old.

The Sickening Summer of 1993

Every summer, my grandma took me to the mall for a girl’s day out, filled with new school clothes, belly laughs, and lunch inside the restaurant at the Emporium Capwell department store.

I vividly remember sitting in a booth across from the kitchen, feeling distracted from spending quality time with my grandma because one of the cooks kept smiling at me while I ate my kids’ grilled cheese and french fries. Of course, naïve eleven-year-old me kept grinning back.

It’s tempting to blame myself and tell you I was flirting with this man behind the line, but I didn’t know what that truly was at that age.

Throughout lunch with my grandmother, this man (in his late twenties, if I had to guess) smiled and blew kisses in my general direction while I smiled back bashfully.

Here’s the scary part: I loved the attention and had no idea what evil lurked behind the Emporium-Capwell doors that day.

After lunch, I excused myself from the table and walked down the carpeted ramp to the restroom, where our waitress flagged me down and said,

“Tony wanted me to give this to you.”

I unfolded a scrap of white paper and saw his name and number scribbled in blue ink.

What in the hell just happened?

It was then that the gravity of my actions hit me.

Was I leading the line cook on by returning a smile?

Was this my fault?

Did I even know what ‘leading a guy on’ meant?

I wasn’t an unruly kid as much as I was a curious one. So, later that day, I called the number on the piece of white scrap paper. And it wasn’t until a grown ass-woman answered that I realized what I had gotten myself into. I hastily hung up the phone, threw away the paper, and never spoke of it again.

I felt guilty for months because I had called the phone number.

Today, when I think back to that appalling day, I ask myself two questions:

What did that waitress think was going to happen after she passed me that note?
And two, where’s this sick piece of crap pedophile now?

I was eleven, baby-faced, and undeniably out to lunch with my elderly grandmother.

Is the world really this sick?

Yes

Twenty-nine years later, my daughter and I walked through the same mall my grandmother and I frequented. We stopped at a table to sit down, and while she energetically teared the plastic off a Hello Kitty toy she picked out for her straight A’s, I noticed a middle-aged man sitting on the bench behind us, gawking at my ten-year-old daughter.

I sized him up quickly: He was alone, with no wife or kids, on a Monday afternoon, staring down my daughter with a cell phone in his hand.

Yes, I could have taken him if he had decided to try anything.

The creepiest thing is his whole demeanor changed when I turned my body to the side and acted as a barrier between him and my baby girl. I made direct eye contact with him, and moments later, he got up and left.

Did I know this man at the mall staring at my daughter was, in fact, evil?

Nope.

Can we ever be too careful about our kids and sexual predators?

Nope.

I know I can’t protect my kids from everything evil in life that will inevitably try and find them sometimes. But I will never stop educating them on how to protect themselves and encourage them to listen to their gut every chance I get.

The weight of the world is heavier when you have a daughter

Here’s an even scarier truth: No one ever knew what happened that day until today. Now that I’m a mother, I am painfully aware of how grave the outcome could have been if I didn’t hang up the phone that day.

My daughter is five months away from her eleventh birthday. It sends shivers down my spine to think of how vulnerable kids are.

I keep wondering when an appropriate time would be to show my kids an episode of To Catch A Predator on YouTube.

Unfortunately, that day is coming sooner than later.

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This post was previously published on Divina Grey’s blog.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

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