Stranger Danger

I guess I knew it was something I needed to talk to my kids about someday, but I hadn't given it much thought. I mean, we're always together. They're not off roaming the streets on their own at ages five or two or zero. And so when our little Stranger Danger incident walked up behind us and scared the crap out of Mama, I guess I felt I needed to teach the lesson on the spot.

I'm pretty used to taking my three boys out and about, and if I do say so myself, I usually feel like I've got my stuff together. With a diaper bag slung over my shoulder, a baby in the sling or the infant carseat and a big boy in each hand, we navigate vast oceans of parking lots to get to whatever appointment or errand we are tackling for the day.

But one frigid Tuesday morning I realized that while I'm paying full attention to my three children as we make our way to do business, I am not paying much attention to much of anything else going on around me.

We slipped into the last parking space in a crowded lot at a busy strip of shops and offices on a busy, busy street. The public health office where we had our appointment with the state WIC program was located here, next to the library, a Payday Loan shop, Cost Cutters and Walgreens. I didn't feel like hauling my heavy diaper bag across the lot and up two flights of stairs, so I left it sitting on the front seat (in plain view) and I locked the car.

Wisconsin winters are downright bone-chilling, so I kept Baby Axel in his carseat where he was snug as a bug. I slung my arm through the handle to lug the clunky old thing inside and grabbed little mittened hands on either side of my body.

We were probably inside for a half an hour or so, and when we came out we were hurried to get home, get lunch and off to preschool. When we got back to the van, I popped Axel's car seat back into the base in the passenger side captain's chair, lifted 2 year old Eli in and sent him back to the back corner of the backseat, and helped 5 year old Owen climb in to his spot in the backseat. I climbed in behind them to help buckle in the backseat boys.

No sooner had I secured Eli's five-point harness than I heard the man's voice behind me, in my freaking van.

"Money?"

Now, had you asked me ahead of time how I would respond to a strange, drunk-sounding man who sneaked up behind me and my children and trapped us in our van to ask for money, I would probably tell you with certainty that I would warn him he was damn near close to losing him man-parts while using the F-word freely and often.

However, reality proved otherwise.

"You scared the crap out of me!" I spat out as I whirled around to see where the voice came from. Honestly, that first reaction would have been the same had it been my mother standing in the doorway of my minivan hovering only inches from my three month old. It just came out.

But when I looked that man in the eyes and realized the seriousness of the situation, my pounding heart could have busted out my ribcage.

Here we were, trapped in our van in a crowed parking lot where no one could see or hear us. My five year old and infant son were in between me and this scruffy, drunk, (and poor, and hungry, and probably cold) stranger. I knew I needed to get rid of him immediately, and somewhere, at some instinctual level, I knew I needed to let Owen know what was going on.

Owen is a very sensitive child. How I handled this was going to affect him and teach him and sit with him for a long time. I knew this without analyzing it at the moment, and at some cellular level I knew to respond in a way that was dialing Owen in to what was taking place.

I simultaneously lunged forward between the captain's chairs to reach the automatic door button above the dash and looked this man straight in the eye. With a loud strong voice I stared at this man and told him with the sternness of a child repeating the mantra taught to her by her mother, "I DON'T KNOW YOU. YOU NEED TO LEAVE."

Who would've guessed you could successfully handle strange, drunk, boundary-crossing men without dropping the F-bomb?

As my automatic door slid shut in slow-mo, the dude turned on his heel and practically ran from my carseat-toting minivan.

I sat down on the back of the folded captain's chair next to Axel and started shaking. That could have been really freaking bad.

"What did that guy want, Mommy?"

"Well, it seems like maybe he needed money, honey. And if he would've asked me for money out in the parking lot where there were lots of people around, I probably would have given him some. But he scared me. And he made me feel trapped and I didn't like it. We didn't know him, and men who don't know mamas and their kids should not sneak up on them and corner them in their vans."

Owen seemed to get that, but his little wheels were still turning. "It looked like he didn't really have anywhere he was going."

"I know, Bud. He might not have anywhere to go. But we have to trust our instincts and my instinct told me that he needed to leave us alone."

"What's an instinct?"

"Well, you know how when you're around some people you feel really good? And then when you're around other people, some who you know, some who you don't know, you feel sort of yucky? That's your instinct. And you have to listen to it. Listen to your body. And if someone you don't know approaches you and you get a funny feeling, you tell them in the loudest, strongest voice you have 'I DON'T KNOW YOU. LEAVE ME ALONE!' "

I felt conflicted for a few days. I want to teach my children to have compassion and that they can't judge a person by what they look like. But I don't want to teach them acceptance at the expense of their safety.

I don't know if that day would have ended uglier if I had given the guy a few bucks. But there are times when you can't afford to find out.