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Marla Jo Fisher
Marla Jo Fisher
Marla Jo Fisher

The interesting thing about being a bad parent is that, no matter how rotten you are, there’s always someone you can point out who’s worse than you.

Did you sit around on the porch all day, putting your dirty bare feet up on the railing and drinking Jack Daniel’s out of a Mason jar, while your overburdened child cooked all the meals and did the laundry?

You did? Why didn’t you invite me over?

Just kidding. My point, which I ignored in favor of a cheap joke, was that even in the above scenario, your kid is still in your house. Under your supervision. Right?

Your child wasn’t found wandering the street alone, like that adorable little toddler who was picked up over the weekend in L.A. County.

Cops went door to door in the neighborhood, but no one even knew who she was.

They posted her picture on social media, to get the word out to her family.

Oddly, no one reported her missing all night long. Though you’d think someone in that family might have noticed the toddler wasn’t there.

Apparently someone woke up, because the mother, father and grandmother all finally called the cops at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning to say, “Hey, that’s our kid,” after they saw her picture.

Apparently, the family told cops that a “miscommunication” led to the event.

Really? Hmm. That’s a pretty big snafu.

I can write about this because there was no lasting harm done, and presumably the cute little minx is home with her family now.

And they’ve all gotten new eyeglasses and put a child lock on the door.

Nosy folks like me will probably never know what happened, but I do remember being left on my own when I was 5 years old.

We were on a road trip, and I was napping on a pile of sleeping bags in the back of our white 1960 Ford Falcon station wagon with the rust primer on the back.

My parents stopped to get gas in the middle of nowhere. Admittedly, in those days long ago, there was a lot more middle of nowhere than today, but it was still way out there in the boonies.

Unnoticed by anyone, I crawled out the back to use the toilet on the side of the building. When I came out, the car was gone.

I remember being confused by this, but not overly disturbed. The internal workings of adult brains were always mysterious to me.

So, I sat down on the curb and waited. And waited. It never occurred to me to go up to the strange men working at the station and tell them I’d been left behind.

I just sat and daydreamed, not too concerned that my parents weren’t coming back for me.

Now, on those road trips, my mom was always extremely busy monitoring how fast my father was driving, and telling him to slow down every 90 seconds – instructions he ignored.

So it was awhile before she looked back into the cargo hold, where the back seat had been folded down and turned into a kid zone, with suitcases on one side, and sleeping bags and pillows all over. My kid brother was always sandwiched somewhere in there, too.

Eventually, she noticed something was missing – i.e., her oldest child. Then, as reported to me later, all hell broke loose.

My mom started screaming and wailing, my dad flipped around and started driving at high speed back to find me.

At that point I was getting a little annoyed that I didn’t have my book to read, because I always brought a book in the car, even when I was in kindergarten.

But, eventually, I saw a white Ford hurtling toward me at high speed, and heard brakes squealing when they saw my little figure, still sitting on the curb.

More screaming by my mother as I was embraced and flung back in the car, and we turned around and headed back out to look for America.

If that was bad parenting, then it must be in my DNA. Or, I suppose the argument could be made that was learned behavior.

Still, not every missing kid is your fault.

So pass the Jack Daniel’s. I brought my own Mason jar.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7994 or mfisher@ocregister.com