I went to eat at a Subway restaurant yesterday for lunch. A friend of mine and I walked from our office to a small chain store in a neighboring strip mall. It’s usually pretty busy for lunch and yesterday was no exception. As we got our food and moved into the dining area, I couldn’t help but notice one small group sitting at a neighboring table. It was a young mother and her two children. The mother (I assume it was their mother) was likely in her early 20s. I’m not very good with children’s ages, but I would have to guess that one was around two and the other was maybe three. They were both very young, too young to not be closely supervised. The mother represented a lot of negative stereo types. She was extremely over weight, she was poorly dressed, and she seemed to be far more interested in what was going on with her phone then in her two charges.
The older child was playing on one side of the booth while the mother and younger child occupied the other. The younger child was pulling on a sign on the wall. It appeared that she was pretty close to pulling it off. It didn’t look to heavy, so I’m sure no one would be seriously injured if it fell. I’ll admit I was kind of rooting for her to pull it off; at least that might have gotten her Mom’s attention. Somewhere mid-lunch, the Mom and the older child left the table and went back toward the bathrooms. The younger child stayed behind in the booth. She was up on the bench half crawling, or awkward walking on two legs using the table as support. I watched her closely, as I was going to try and catch her if she attempted a nose dive out of the booth. I commented to my friend that I didn’t think it was such a good idea to leave her unattended. After a minute or so I saw the young mother come by and head up toward the front of the restaurant. She was alone. The young child saw her go by and crawled out of the booth and followed the woman. Pretty quickly the Mother came back again toward the bathrooms scooping up the young child as she went by. It was at this point that the screaming started.
We could hear a child’s screaming voice throughout the restaurant. It was quickly apparent that the older child was locked, by herself, in the restroom. She was screaming bloody murder. The mother was trying to calm her down from outside the door. She was also trying to explain to her how to open the door. The wailing continued. The people in line were all turning around trying to see what the commotion was. The shrieks of child permeated the restaurant. I listened to the Mother try to explain, “Just turn the door knob honey.” It wasn’t working. I looked back there and saw that one of the employees was trying to open the door as well. She was having no luck either. I guess there was no key. I considered trying to help, but I decided that there was probably pretty little I was going to be able to do, short of breaking down the door. The Mother came to our table and asked the address of restaurant as she was frantically dialing the phone. I can only assume she was calling the fire department.
I can’t explain how the child managed to get locked in the bathroom alone, but I feel pretty comfortable blaming the Mother. I don’t really know her situation. This whole thing might have been caused by a faulty door at Subway. The child might have accidently locked the door herself, but if she wasn’t old enough to open the door, should she really have ever been in there alone? I felt sad for the kids. I feel sad for many children who are being raised by an increasingly distracted population of parents. I left the restaurant and went back to work. I don’t know how the story ended. I hope she eventually got out. That particular Subway is far too busy to have to give up one of its restrooms.
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