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Dear Anonymous,


Sorry it took me so long to reply to this- it's Christmas and I have a lot of holiday hours. But I have been meaning to reply since the day I saw your comment.

I don't want you to think I'm a heartless bastard. I'm not. But I also lived through the whole McDonald's Coffee In My Lap thing and it was one of those moments I knew the world had gone crazy. Someone put coffee in their lap and spilled it on their junk and sued McDonalds for a gazillion dollars. As if they didn't know coffee is hot. Seriously?

And there's this "who can I sue?" billboard on 75 Southbound.

And you're right, I don't have kids. I probably won't ever. But I do have dogs. I have had dogs for going on a quarter of a century and I've also worked in retail for over ten years. I'm not saying dogs and customers are the same as having kids, but they're the best I can go with, really.

And before I get any farther, I feel really bad for the parents that they lost their kids. Any death is sad and important and meaningful. I'm not trying to take away from that.

But what I meant in my blog entry is where has personal responsibility gone? Kids drown in swimming pools and you don't see pools getting closed down- they get gates and locks and I've even seen these wrist band things that sound an alarm in water. Kids put things in power outlets and the power company doesn't issue a recall- you buy those little plastic things that go in outlets. Kids eat stuff under the sink- you call poison control and get lock things for drawers or put rubber bands around the knobs.

Now, what I saw on the news for this blind thing was this weird roman blind where it had loops of string at the bottom to draw the blinds up. I have never seen blinds like that in real life. I also saw normal style blinds with strands of cords- they weren't linked at the bottom and weren't long enough to reach the windowsill. In my house we have some sort of cordless roman blind.

My first thought seeing the regular blinds with the hanging strands is, 'can't you just tie the cords in a bow higher up?' because I have been to houses like that. It never occurred to me why, but hey, there you go.

The other thing that bugged me about this case, which you pointed out in that parents can't be everywhere, was where were the parents and where were the kids? Say you left your kid in one of those pen things- there's a loud thump from the other room as the kid climbs out. Then the kid has to toddle across the room a bit until he happens upon the unknotted blinds, and then there's the loud rattling of blinds while the kid plays with them before something bad happens. This is easily ten to fifteen minutes, in my mind.

When I hear a noise upstairs and I don't see my dogs the first thing I do is yell their names- at which point you usually hear them panic and tip over the garbage can. Or I go look to see what they're up to. When I hear a noise I find out what it is, immediatly, because they're dogs. They might be up to anything. I don't wait several minutes to go investigate.

Other story about the dogs- I took Bailey to the petstore and because she was well behaved I bought her this sausage style dog food. And while I was trying to break it into pieces she ate the whole thing in one bite and you could see it get lodged in her throat. And she looked at me like oh my god and started choking and I reached into her mouth and grabbed the sausage and pulled it out. And she promptly tried to eat it again.

They're dogs. They have no idea what they're doing. They'd probably eat laundry soap if it was on the floor. That's why you have to keep an eye on them.

And what I can't fathom with these kids and blinds cases is what the parents were doing. Sleeping? Sure, I guess so. I'm a pretty light sleeper though. In the other room? There are those little walkie talkie things. At my Dad's house when my little brother was kept in a pen, we just dragged the pen to whatever room we were in.

Or when they buy plastic outlet blockers and things to keep drawers shut they could tie the cords up in a bow.