FOR THEIR CHILDREN

Dear Spike:

Since you're still quite small for your age, next month we're taking you in to see a nutritionist. This week, a letter came in the mail explaining what we should expect during our visit — including a meeting with a social worker.

Your mother was aghast. "A social worker! Do they think we're bad parents?"

I did my best to reassure her they no one thought that. But, in a way, I hope that someone suspects it's at least a possibility. I don't mind proving I'm fit to be your dad.

Sometimes I wish more proof was required of us all.

The other day you and I were coming back from a stroll in the park when something caught my eye.

The little girl was sitting on a bus stop bench, watching the cars fly by on 900 South. The man behind her was leaning up against a tree, rocking back and forth and mumbling to himself. We walked by slowly, then stopped about a half block away and watched for a bit longer.

The girl was eight, maybe nine, and decked out in a blue and red cheerleading costume, probably for a school Halloween party. The man was in his 40s. He was hunched over a gray canvas bag, sorting through some papers.

I wasn't even sure they were together. But after a few minutes, the girl walked over, set her hand on the man's shoulder, and whispered something in his ear. He waved her away, and she returned to the bus stop bench.

It probably shouldn't have taken me as long as it did, but I finally pulled the mobile phone from my pocket and called the number for the city's police dispatcher. "Listen," I said. "I don't know what is going on, but it just doesn't look right. That guy's in no position to be looking after a little girl."

A few minutes later an officer drove by. After a while, he was joined by another. It was striking to me how calm the little girl looked as a third, then a fourth officer arrived — as though she'd been through all of this before.

The officers helped the man to his feet, then watched as he took the little girl by the hand and stumbled away.

"That's it?" I asked one of the policemen.

"He told us that he's having a bad reaction to a flu shot," one of them said.

"Yeah, those things can really screw you up," another added.

I'm sure there's something legal to be said here for "probable cause" and "reason to search," but it seemed to me that the officers were taking a rather cavalier attitude to the situation. Maybe they, like the little girl, had simply seen it all before.

The man and the girl walked to the end of the block and rounded the corner, up our street. I lifted you into my arms and followed. When I turned the corner, I saw the man was sitting on the ground. The little girl was standing next to him, trying to help him up. I beckoned for the officers to come see. When they approached the man again, he got up and started to walk away. I suppose that's what tipped the scales for them. Soon he was back on the ground and they were going through his bag.

A few moments later, the man was in handcuffs in the back of a patrol car, and one of the officers was emptying the remaining contents of a large vodka bottle into a bush. The little girl was picked up by a relative. And they all watched together as her father was carted away to jail.

I used to believe that parents were in the best position to make decisions for their children, but I've long since opened my eyes to a darker reality.

Maybe it was the brother-sister pair I met, a few years back, who found their mother dead of a heroin overdose. The little girl had run downstairs to find help as the little boy — just five years old — pulled a needle from his mother's arm and banged furiously on her chest. He was still there, on top of her lifeless body, when the police arrived. "You promised!" he was screaming, over and over. "You promised you would stop!"

Maybe it is the stories your mother comes home with, day after day after day, from the inner-city school where she works. The little girl with the gang markings, stenciled in permanent black marker on her legs. The little boy who complains that there is no food at home, but whose parents can't seem to get him to school on time for a free breakfast there. The little girl, all of five years old, who comes to school dressed like a whore and tells the other girls to "walk more sexy." The little boy who falls asleep on his desk, exhausted because his parents refuse to put him to bed at night.

And then, as if that's all not enough, a reminder on our street of the sheer inability of some parents to make good decisions for their children: A dad, far too drunk to look after himself, being looked after by his young daughter.

There are, of course, plenty of parents who make good decisions for their children, every day — parents who feed them right and treat them right and keep them out of harm's way, insomuch as any parent is capable of doing such things.

But these days, when I hear folks saying the government should get out of the way of parents who just want to raise their kids as they see fit, I wonder where they think we should draw the line.

For the record, I don't know where the line should be drawn, either. I've always thought I was a fan of getting the government out of people's lives, but lately, in my more cynical moments, I've begun to wonder if we shouldn't be licensing people to raise children.

There is a happy medium between those two extremes, I guess, but I'm quite sure we've not found it yet.

I suppose that parenting is both a blessing and a right — I only wish we'd all treat it more like the former than the latter.

Love,
dad