Oh M' Gosh!

I pulled up to the driveway, and there was a little girl (maybe 2 1/2, she couldn't talk well) in the street with NO supervision, adult or otherwise. Holy cow! I thought.

The garage door was open slightly at the house across the street, so I asked her where her father was and to go to him. So she went into the garage and closed the garage door.

I thought that was that, but when I went into my house and peeked out the window, I saw that she opened the garage door again and went back outside, still unsupervised. So I opened my door and stood on my porch and she stood there not moving. After a moment, she went back into the garage and I went back into the house, and we played this cat and mouse game for another minute or two, until I guess she got comfortable with me and started to run across the street to me.

Ahh! Kid on the loose! Crossing the street even!


So, I yelled out, "No no no! Don't cross the street by yourself! Let's find your parents!" and I booked it across the street myself (also unsupervised) to help keep her on that side and went to the door of what I believed to be her house and rang the doorbell.

After maybe ten seconds, the door opened and then closed.

Huh? WTF?

In retrospect, the little girl was standing at the door, so I'm thinking maybe someone opened the door, saw her standing there, and then closed the door thinking it was her that rang the doorbell (even though it was too high). I have no other possible explanation. I really don't want to speculate all that much, because I know it sounds crazy, but it just freakin' happened. So this isn't some vague, nearest memory to the point of the story wins a prize type of recollection. But I digress...

At this point the girl was running around again and acting like she was going to run into the street and I was really getting worried, you know like wondering if I should call the police or something.

I rang the doorbell again and someone finally came to the door, ran to the girl, picked her up asking her what she was doing out there.

I explained that when I got home she was running around by herself, in and out of the street. He said he was in the bathroom and that she was really bad about opening doors and that he thought his brother was watching her. At this point the apparent brother peeked his head out of the door, looking quite out of it at that (hopefully just sleepy, not that any non-supervisory state at this point was acceptable). They both thanked me for keeping her out of harms way, I was very apologetic about disturbing them, and they all went inside as I crossed the street back to my little domain, heart still pounding, but relieved no one got hurt.

I'm not going to draw any conclusions. Trying to give some benefit of the doubt here, afterall Shelby was certainly capable of such a thing when she was younger (always getting into things and not minding). It was all a whirlwind that only took up maybe five minutes of my day, but sheesh, what a draining five minutes. I think of my children in that scenario and about keel over in shock (and awe of course).

Probably the near-craziest thing that happened (because you really just can't top some of that stuff on the crazy-scale) was that another neighbor on my side of the street was in his driveway, working on his car, and I don't think he gave one glance or paid any notice to what was going on maybe fifty yards away from him. I mean, come on, man! A LITTLE GIRL IN A LAVENDER OUTFIT (ergo kinda hard to miss) IS RUNNING AROUND IN THE STREET AND I KNOW YOU SEE HER, TOO.

What is this world coming to?