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2002-07-16 | 4:33 p.m.

Before I had children, I would listen to my friend Leo talk about kidnapping. He would get extremely agitated on the subject, which I attributed to the fact that he had a young daughter. Also he is just a generally neurotic person.

One day he called me up with an idea. He wanted me to convince the H.A. to track down kidnappers. He had this idea that kidnappers, being scuzzy underworld types, would naturally frequent the same establishments as the H.A. and that, thrown together this way, the lucky H.A., feeling the same current of outrage pulsing through his veins as every other citizen, would do unto these nefarious child-stealing criminals everything the police and the courts could not. This was by itself a considerable act of imagination, but most of all, the idea that I could convince a sizable group of H.A. to do anything was an out-and-out laugh riot.

It troubles me to report that more and more I find Leo's neuroses become my own. It's not enough to have all my own neuroses; it seems I must absorb those of my friends, too. Who knows how I would feel if we lived in one of those places where people say "I never thought it could happen here." Everyone who lives in this town knows damn well it could happen here, because it has happened over and over again.

But the newspaper story I most fear becoming isn't the parent of a kidnapped child. The one I have found most sobering is the story of the parent who forgets the child in the car seat. Because I am so distracted and forgetful, because I am always running late, because despite being reasonably intelligent I can be such a royal idiot sometimes, I always think, that could have been me. It wasn't me, it hasn't been me, but there is not enough distance between us to shrug off the conviction. Thinking about this today, it occurred to me to be grateful that at last all my children are big enough to let themselves out of a car seat and out of a locked car.

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