It is 11am and we are standing in line at Walgreen’s. An elderly, (90 years old in March, officially) gentleman comes over and asks how to get to the battery store. I explain it to him and just as he turns around to leave, he turns back around and looks at Tristan. Tristan hides behind my leg.
"I LOOOOOVVVEEE babies", the man says. He reaches for Tristan. In 1/10 of a second, I surmise the situation. I’m taller, stronger and younger and if he trys to snatch a child, he’s not getting out alive. So, I allow the social experiment to continue.
He asks Tristan if he wants to give him a hug to which Tristan responds, “no”. He reaches over and starts to pick Tristan up. Now Tristan weighs almost 30lbs and he’s no easy breeze in the lifting department, especially when Mommy has an arm around his waist and he’s trying to get from Strange Old Man to me. He’s fighting and crying. At this point, I’m afraid to jerk Tristan away because Strange Old Guy is kind of rickety and I’m not looking for any lawsuits today, but it’s taking him an awfully long time to try to lift him. So I gently pull Tristan away and move him quickly to my hip. A vantage point which allows Tristan to hide as Strange Old Guy coos and tries to tickle him. Strange Old Guy locks onto his next target. Connor.
Strange Old Guy says, “Come here and give me some lovin’” and reaches his arms out for Connor. I’ve about had enough of this by now, especially since we have an audience of store clerks and the other people standing in line. Connor gives me that, “Do I have to, look?” To which I responded, “Maybe it would just be better if we shook hands and introduced ourselves”. Connor is ok with this and he reaches out to Strange Old Man, proud to get to practice his new skill. Strange Old Man, gently takes Connor’s hand and slowly draws it over to his mouth to kiss it. Now it wasn’t a flirtatious sort of kiss. It was more of a kiss from a sweet old man that doesn’t understand that Connor is horrified and that Mommy is about to take this man out.
Connor yanks his hand back and the old man starts telling me about how much he loves kids and that if he ever saw anyone hurting them, he would take the kids. “Even if it was you”, he said. I replied, “You try to take one of my kids and you’re not getting out that door”. I wink. He tells me I have beautiful eyes, says good bye to the boys and leaves.
I’m standing in line again, but someone has gone ahead of me, as the Strange Old Man situation occurred. The man that’s gone ahead of me, is a very large, Southern Gentleman, I see him suddenly freeze and start looking around. I start looking around and then look down as he does. Connor is inspecting something on the bottom of his foot and has grabbed the back of Southern Gentleman’s pants and is holding on for dear life, while he checks his shoe. This is causing Southern Gentleman’s pants to come down just a little bit as Connor has the pants right below the guys butt towards the inner thigh. No wonder the guy is freaking. He’s just trying to buy some aspirins and suddenly there’s a 4 year old fondling him. I gasp to which Connor looks up and realizes that he’s doing something bad and standing up, thinking that he’s in trouble for inspecting his shoe. Southern Gentleman laughs it off as I apologize profusely. At least he thinks it’s funny.
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