Week 2 Survivor Idol TW be advised

[adoptedwriter]

 You awaken early in a sweat after a fitful night’s sleep. You’re exhausted

 before the day even begins. Everything you’ve meticulously planned for begins this morning.

You shower frantically before your child awakens and dress quickly. It’s the first day of school and people are looking to you to lead the way gently but firmly, as you’ve done for the past 10 years. Your career means everything. Breathe deep…You got this…

Educating youth right is the best way to produce a better society of respect, kindness, talent and critical thinking abilities. Your job is everything…

You’ve hired a new art teacher who has great project ideas for incorporating global awareness into the curriculum, and a new math teacher who shows promise for raising district standardized test scores and for teaching in the newly implemented gifted program. Furniture in the staff lounge has been updated over the summer as were the three copy machines. You’re excited to see these changes as you wriggle into your skirt and new blouse. Fresh beads of perspiration roll down your just-showered back as you lift your toddler out of her bed, change her clothing and hand her a cereal bar before buckling her into the car seat. 

The morning DJ on the car radio tells listeners it’s going to be nearly 100 degrees for a high today, and you’re thankful that your board of education approved spending on a new air conditioning system for your modest middle school last year. Your successful plea that to keep children at their healthiest and most focused for learning depends on effective climate control in the academic setting was the final push for a better HVAC system. Your teachers applaud your efforts. 

You’re thankful for your career, and you remember to pick up the three dozen doughnuts as a welcome-back gesture of support for your amazing staff of teachers, aides and maintenance workers who break their backs every school day and beyond to provide top care and learning opportunities for young minds. You pull into your parking spot and grab those boxes on the passenger seat and stride into your school, smiling and charged up for another great year. 

Around 2 PM you get your first break of the day to sit down and eat half of a left over doughnut left in one of the bakery boxes. You stare at the bottom of the white box at the grease spots and decide that although everyone likes donuts, maybe next time you’ll get bagels. 

And you suddenly feel sick to your stomach as you tremble and realize the horror of a mistake you made at 8 AM. 

You dash to your nice car parked out front to discover that in all of your enthusiasm and hyper-focus on the first day back to school for your staff, your 16-month-old daughter has perished slowly and silently from heat stroke in your closed up SUV while you were off being everything to everyone else for hours inside your “perfect” building. 

.............

 

This news story made local headlines in 2007. 

 

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2017/08/24/ten-years-ago-day-local-mom-left-her-child-die-car/596774001/

 

I cannot imagine this mother’s thinking on that fateful day. Initially I wanted to judge the —ck out of her.  How could she?  I’ve been super tired and distracted but would never forget to drop off my kid at day care. 

Hell, I once quit a teaching job because I was being forced to put my work life ahead of my kids’ well-being. She was criticized by some folks as being too career-centered and privileged because she lived in an affluent community and drove a Mercedes. However, this mom was never charged by authorities and her school community actually rallied and supported her in her time of loss.

Part of me thinks Mrs. Slaby should have known she was in over her head between her home and professional life and should have taken a break or relied more on others for help. If she was so highly-qualified in her position and so well schooled, she should have had better sense.  I would never want this person to be my principal-boss. I’ll be honest, this over-10-year-old news story yanks, gnaws and tortures my heartstrings so badly that I can’t feel any love. 

 

On the other hand, part of me knows that there is no punishment greater than the perpetual self doubt, self loathing and an inability to self forgive which she will live with for the rest of her days. What happened was tragic, inexcusable, and neglectful, but her life is ruined forever, and it was her own fault. The day this story came out in my home town I instantly felt disgusted and punched in the gut. But also, my mom-heart goes out to Brenda, her husband and older daughter because I do not believe this educator is sociopathic. She was just incredibly hyper-driven to be excellent to the point she fell overboard and inadvertently dragged her baby down with her.

Comments

[gunwithoutmusic]

Wow, this was not going where I thought it would go at the beginning of it - I was reading this as a "tortures of everyday life and trying to be everything to everyone and never having time for yourself." I've got to say, the way that you wrote this makes me fairly sympathetic, because you explicitly put in there that the child was buckled into the car, but then made me forget all about her until right at the very end. This was very fitting for the prompt; well done.

[adoptedwriter]

That was the effect I was going for. Thanks!

[uselesstinrelic]

This is definitely one of those kinds of stories we have all heard before and wondered how on Earth it could have happened. My uncle said one time that he could totally picture himself doing it. Sometimes you get in your routine and you're thinking about all the stuff you're going to do that day and you just forget. I guess we've all left a coffee cup on top of the roof before or gotten out to the car and looked around and said "where are my keys??" A distracted brain is a distracted brain, it's just sometimes the price paid is bigger. Much, much bigger.

I don't think any punishment she could have received would ever be anything but pale in comparison to what she will do to herself for the rest of her life. It makes me really sad, actually.

Anyway, it was a solid entry and I didn't see the flip coming which is, I'm sure, part of the strength of the piece and I know you'll want to hold onto that. But, at the same time, I see you did include a trigger warning tag! So that's really thoughtful. I have PTSD (not related to this!) and got accidentally triggered for the first time a couple weeks back and it was shockingly difficult. I hadn't expected that. I'm so used to people downplaying TWs as sort of a sappy soft-feelings thing that I didn't realise it really can be easy to become triggered and it really can throw someone's life off track! Anyway, I think it's great you're adding one- but it -is- displaying at the bottom of the entry, so you might want to consider putting it up at the top where it can do the most for anyone who might need it! :>

[adoptedwriter]

Yeah I was wondering re where to place the TW notice and whether I should be more specific. I also didn’t want to give the story line away. The TW is such a tough call. Thanks! I don’t usually write about “triggery” things but this one called for something.

[bsgsix]

It's always so sad to hear about these stories because we KNOW they are true - all over the news, every summer, this happens (thanks for the TW, by the way - I have CPTSD and therefore, I knew to keep my guard up, so that is appreciated). Your twist at the end was very effective - I can't believe the child was forgotten, and yet, *I* had forgotten, too. That shows how easily we can just... exist and go about things while forgetting what really matters. Scary, really.

Well done. I'm just sorry it's based on a true story, and sorry it happens in the first place!

[adoptedwriter]

Right on! Thanks! That was the effect I was hoping for...altho it was a suck-fest of an event. I also often wonder why the day care never called to check on the child. That could have saved her if they had called soon enough.

[megatronix]

These situations are so, so, so, so sad. So unimaginably, tragically sad. I have always been terrified of doing this, with either a child or a pet. It's one of my biggest fears. (I'm glad you put a trigger warning on it.)

I feel so much for the people this happens to that I sometimes feel a bit defensive and upset with other people (often found in the comments sections of such news stories) who want to condemn them as uncaring murderers. I'm like of course they're not sociopaths, of course they shouldn't be punished, it's a *horrible* accident.

I think one of my big resistances to clockwork-like routine is my fear of exactly this kind of incident. Because if you're going, going, going, and on the exact same routine almost all the time, and then you have one day where you're supposed to do something slightly different... Your brain just short circuits and you forget.

I drove with my little baby one time. He was 8 months old. I was tired and my mind was filled with a thousand things as I drove home. He suddenly said something, a little babble noise. And I looked up in my rear view mirror, to the backseat mirror and saw his face, and realized - I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten he was even with me. I hadn't stopped yet, so who knows if I would have remembered as I got out of the car. But I was so freaked out because that had already been a fear of mine, and to realize how it happens, how it feels. Oh my god.

It's our brains betraying us by trying to narrow our focus, cut out our attention/memory from things we do daily, because there are other things vying for our attention. It's just the worst kind of accident. I feel so, so, deeply sorry for anyone this has happened to. I think the worst mistake anyone can make is judging folks like this to the point they feel like it could never happen to them, because it could happen to any of us. It's one of those faults of human brain wiring, and it's devastating but true to know it can and does happen. That poor family.

[adoptedwriter]

agreed

[bleodswean]

You did a masterful job of internalizing this terrible and horrible tragedy. Amazing how the reader "forgets" the child, too.

Every summer, I think we are all traumatized with these stories and utterly staggered by how they happen and why they happen and ....

[adoptedwriter]

Thanks. I hate to put good people like us Idolers thru it, but that’s the effect I was going for.

[eeyore_grrl]

These stories are a gut-punch. And one of my greatest fears when he was a baby. But my heart goes out to the parents this happens to.

[adoptedwriter]

Yeah. I hear ya.

[murielle]

Gut punched!

Such a heartbreaking truth. Agonizing at the time and even more so now because you tell it so very well.

I'm torn because I was the daughter of a job-driven mother who barely knew I existed when she had her dream job, but at the same time, such a tragic mistake...none of us can really imagine what that's like or how anyone could live with it.

This is so very well written and so very heartbreaking to relive through your words. Well done!

[adoptedwriter]

Thanks so much! It was hard to write, even tho the story broke in like 2008 or so.

[alycewilson]

This is so upsetting. Until the very end, I thought it was a personal story from your past, because unless I remember wrong, you've been in the education field for quite a while (though I never heard of you being a school administrator). My heart goes out for that mom, to have to live with that tragic mistake. When KFP was very little, I was always checking him in the rearview mirror, but I had the luxury of being a work-at-home mom without a particularly pressing schedule. I'm sure she's torturing herself even to this day over this.

[adoptedwriter]

Yeah. It’s awful I’m sure.

[wolfden]

That was horrific but well done. I can't imagine the guilt.

I can understand how it happens but it terrifies me to imagine it. I mean so far the worst thing I've forgotten in the back of the car was a dozen eggs.

[adoptedwriter]

Yeah. I forgot milk once. Lol.

[n3m3sis43]

Oh man. I remember this news story. So tragic and people were awful about it. Parents are so overwhelmed so much of the time; I can't imagine forgetting my kid but I feel for her.

[adoptedwriter]

Yeah. It still haunts me.

[halfshellvenus]

Oh, god. I didn't see that coming!

I understand the rush to judgment, because how could any parent forget their own child that they never dropped off at daycare?

But then I think about, say, the ADHD entry that Meg wrote, and I think about ADHD hyperfocus and time-blindness, and how things can just "disappear" when your mind is on something else. And then I think of being that mother, and having such an awful thing happen. I wonder that she hasn't committed suicide, because I don't know how a person could want to go on after that.

That poor little girl. *aches*

[adoptedwriter]

Right!!! Feelings all over the place!!!