Hypothetically Speaking

Let’s go back to our hypothetical friend Sara. Let’s pretend that Sara works at a very family friendly organization located on a large property. The organization owns many tools and pieces of equipment in order to maintain this property. Meet Sam, Sara’s husband. Sam, who is not an employee, has been given permission to use some of the tools at the organization because, like I said, it is a family friendly organization. While Sam is occupied with the tools, their 9-year-old son Mason is hanging around. Somewhere along the line, Sam gives permission to Mason to hop into a golf cart owned by the organization and take it for a little spin. This being a family friendly organization, there are other employees’ children around. Mason, being adventurous, offers to give two other children, aged 5 and 8, a ride. Their mothers whose spouses are also employees, make this discovery and are understandably upset. What would you do? Talk to Sam directly? If this were a regular neighborly situation, yes, that is perhaps the proper course of action. You might approach Sam and discuss the apparent safety concerns, ask him to keep his child and cart on his own property, or keep your child on your own. But, let’s consider a couple of things:

1) The golf cart belongs to the organization, and it is against policy not only for non-employees to drive it, but obviously for any child to do so.

2) The incident occurred on organization property. The safety concerns and liability are considerable.

3) Knowing Sam, he’s likely totally unconcerned.

4) Sam’s wife, Sara is easily offended.

5) Both Sam and Sara already feel like they are unfairly treated by the higher-ups in the organization.

Maybe I’m an overprotective parent—I know, we all grew up without seatbelts and lived to tell about it. But can you just imagine how you would feel in the unlikely event that your child injured or killed someone else’s child (or himself) in such a preventable situation? 9-year-olds may have the dexterity to operate such a vehicle, but there are reasons we don’t give out driver’s licenses to them. Any number of horrible accidents could occur including pinning under, between, around, falling, crashing etc. Beyond bodily damage, let us also consider the risk of property damage.

So, in our hypothetical situation, let’s suppose that the mothers opt to discuss this with their husbands who are employees of the organization. One of them, chooses to bring it up directly with Sam. What is Sam’s reaction? Perhaps he says “Oh, gee, I didn’t realize he was driving it, let alone offering rides, I’m sorry.” Or maybe “Oh, I didn’t think of it that way, I’m sorry, won’t happen again.” Or just maybe, “What, am I a big mean guy that they can’t come talk to me? Come on, 7-year-olds drive those things! What’s the big deal?”

What’s the BIG DEAL?!? The big deal my friend is that the cart is not yours, the property is not yours, you are not an employee (and neither is your child for that matter) and if, heaven forbid, something should happen, the repercussions in terms of publicity, liability, life and limb are enormous. Not to mention your wife could probably lose her job whether or not there is an incident.

What grown adult thinks this is okay? Perhaps the reason I didn’t want to discuss it with you myself is that it is like talking to my 5-year-old, but more frustrating because you should know better.

Don’t get me wrong, I like this hypothetical Sara and Sam. They are nice people. They are fun to be around and very kind. They do nice things for me and my children like to play with theirs. But, as evidenced by my last Sara posting about the library, they can be very frustrating because they treat rules like a big smorgasbord and tend to have double standards where their own children are concerned. While it does allow for discussions with our children about how not everyone chooses to obey the rules and just because Sara says it’s okay for her kids, it’s not okay for ours and so on, it does make parenting in vicinity more of a challenge. It makes life around here difficult, because we all have privileges and as many an adage suggests, it only takes one to abuse privileges to the point of ruining it for everyone. It makes friendship a challenge, because it’s hard to want to hang out with people who are constantly doing things you just disagree with vehemently. It obviously rubs off on their children and you certainly don’t want it rubbing off on your own. I know, live and let live right?

I should really spend less time fretting about hypothetical situations