Monday, July 17, 2006

Rueda del muerte



I was thumbing through the channels at L's place (because L likes to step outside the box, and happens to own a television). There's this guy named Deutsch on the screen, nearly bouncing up and down he was so irate. So what gives?

Apparently, some ghetto-fab mamma put her six year old son in the swinging bucket of a Ferris wheel alone. The operator smiled at them as she strapped him in, and she moved behind the cattle fencing with the rest of the family members, waiting for their loved ones to make their way around the jerky, start-and-stop ride. When her son made it to the top, he started waving frantically out the barred window.

Ghetto-mama pushes through the crowd, past the gate, and tugs on the sleeve of the operator.

"My son, he's afraid. Bring him down."

And then she heard the word that would be the death of her son. The operator blinked at her, brow furrowed...

"Que?"

He didn't speak English. Not a word. The frantic mother squinted up to the rocking carriage that housed her little boy. She watched him climb over the plexi-glass wall and slip through the bars. Ghetto-mama screamed - screamed at her son to get back into the car, screamed at the operator who only shook his head with his mouth open. The little boy hung from a spoke for a few moments before his little hands couldn't grip the bar any more; finally, when he could hold on no longer, he let go and fell to the ground.

Resilient as they are, six year old boys don't stand up well to a fall like that. The little boy died.

Ghetto-mama intends to sue the company that manages the carnival, of course. She claims that the reason her son died is because the operator didn't speak English. Nevermind the fact that she loaded her pint-sized kindergartener onto an adult ride by himself. Nevermind that she didn't teach the kid enough to sit tight when he was scared or confused. Nevermind that she let him watch shows and movies on television where it's funny and cool to climb out of a box on a carnival ride and hang from a spoke (think: that first date asking in The Notebook) - most likely completely unsupervised and without the guidance from a parent to say simple, logic-based things like, "People don't really do that."

Please don't misunderstand: I'm not saying it's okay to hire imported labor that's nonfunctional just because it's cheaper. What I'm saying is that Ghetto-mama needs to be jailed for negligence, and that her six month old needs to be taken away from her before she decides to let the baby try his hand at driving the car... by himself.

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