John Shore Christian Blog and Commentary

Act now to share the love of Christ in the Middle East

Lady at Starbucks Loudly Accuses Mom of Child Abuse! Just Now!

I'm sitting inside a dinky Starbucks. About eight people are standing in line for fancy joes. It's a baking 95 degrees outside.

A woman---30ish, cut-off jeans, sleeveless tee---just burst into the store and called out, "Hey! Does anyone in here have a car out there with four kids in it?" No one replied; everyone just did the "Nothing Scary or In Any Way Weird is Happening Here" freeze. I'm tucked into a corner, so no one can see me anyway.

"Okay!" cried the woman. "If that's your car out there with the four kids in it, you need to know I'm about to call the police!" I got significantly less interested than I had been in checking my blog stats.

There's this long pause, and then this fairly yuppiesh-looking woman standing in line for coffee says in an offended voice, "Excuse me, but that's my car." Once they knew they wouldn't be directly involved everyone felt free to openly follow the drama unfolding before them. I know I was staring like a lemur.

"What is the matter with you?" said my new hero. "You can't leave your kids out in the car in this kind of heat! Are you insane?"

The outed terrible mother looked over the shoulder of the person in front of her to access how close she is to the front of the line. "I'll be there soon, okay?" she said to her accuser.

"What kind of [bad word] is this ?" said a guy with dreadlocks waiting behind her.

"You [bad verb] [bad noun]!" said the first woman. She popped open her cellphone and went back outside for better reception. "Unbelievable."

The bad mom, remaining where she was, rolled her eyes and shook her head, as if to say "Can you believe the nerve of some people?"

"We're not serving you," said the girl behind the counter.

And that's what it took for the World's Worst Mom to finally go outside and ... well, rescue her kids and stay out jail, I guess.

Man. Some people sure do like Starbucks.

No, but ... there it is. One minute you're just sitting there wondering if you feel like writing a blog post, and the next you're ready to commit suicide. Or murder.


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