commentary by Patrick H. Moore
What is life but a constant setting, juggling and readjusting of priorities? After my daughter had been away at college for four weeks we received an aggrieved phone call from her in which she insisted she wanted to change schools next year. “Why after a mere four weeks?” we inquired. Simple. She didn’t like the priorities of her fellow freshman whose only ambition seems to be to smoke weed on a hillside not far from her hillside campus. We told her to hang in there and to not let their feckless priorities interfere with hers. Happily, she’s stuck to her guns and is doing well and has apparently abandoned her desire to transfer.
In her case, she fortunately had (and has) the power to reject the irresponsible lifestyle of a fairly large percentage of the freshman class.
But what if she was a child and had no choice other than to obey the delinquent demands of a selfish and unfeeling caretaker whose top (and apparent only) priority was to find the freakin’ missing remote control unit so he could glue himself to his mighty flat screen? And what if Mr. Caretaker was so intent on finding the remote that he told the child in no uncertain terms that she had exactly 15 minutes to find the remote or it was “Hit the Road Jacqueline?” And what if the child was unable to locate the little bugger and was put out on the street to fend for herself? And what if the reason she was under the thumb of Mr. Caretaker was because she and her brother and mother were homeless, which was why she was being ordered around by Mr. C in the first place.
If this were her lot in life, she would be in the precise same position as a 12-year-old homeless girl in Wicomico County, Maryland who – along with her 9-year-old brother – were tossed out onto the street by a real life Mr. C because she and her brother could not find the remote in the allotted 15-minute time period.
Vanessa Junkin of DelMarvaNow writes:
Two people face charges after two children sitting outside a store late at night told law enforcement they were kicked out of a Jersey Road home for not being able to find the TV remote…
Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the Midway Minimart, at the corner of Jersey Road and Naylor Mill Road outside Salisbury, to check on the two children, a 12-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy, at about 11:14 p.m. Nov. 24, charging documents state. The girl estimated they had been sitting outside for about two hours.
Here’s how it allegedly happened:
The children’s mother, who doesn’t have a cellphone and undoubtedly is not flush with cash, was out searching for a place for them to spend the night. She had asked her friend, Leslie Ann Pruitt Parks, 44, of Salisbury, to watch her kids while she was out scouting around for a place. Leslie Ann agreed, perhaps without clearing it with her husband, 62-year-old Leonard Joseph Parks, 62, who was at work.
Problems arose when Leonard (AKA Mr. C) got home from work sometime after 9 pm and got thoroughly pissed off because he couldn’t find the remote control. (There is no evidence that the kids lost the remote but there is also no evidence that they didn’t lose it.)
The charging document reads as follows:
“Leslie’s husband, Leonard Joseph Parks, came home from work and told the kids to find the television remote within 15 minutes or they were getting kicked out of the residence.”
15 minutes came and went and Mr. C, a man of his word, then sent the kids packing. (According to the police, Mr. C literally pushed the kids out of his house.)
When the deputies spoke to the children, they told him that they hadn’t been fed since lunch time which means they had been without food for about 11 hours when they were rescued. The court papers state that the children were fed and turned over to Social Services.
Mr. C is charged with two counts of neglect of minor and two counts of contributing to the condition of a child. The children’s mother’s friend, Leslie Parks, is charged with two counts of conspiring to contribute to the condition of a child.
The couple was released from the Wicomico County Detention Center on $30,000 bond, and have bail review hearings scheduled for today. I presume they will not be detained at the bail hearing but will remain free as birds with plenty of time to scour the house for the remote while waiting for their January 29th trial date.
As of now, it is not known if the children were returned to their mother.
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Poor kids… Imagine how abandoned and abused they must feel…
Although I was never as bad off as these two youngsters, we were quite poor during our first several years in California in the early 1960s, and I clearly remember the time we spent a full two weeks living in the Broadway Motel (it’s still there) in Oakland. I must have been in the 7th grade then and I don’t recall telling my new friends at Claremont Junior High on College Avenue in North Oakland that we had been reduced to living in a motel, 5 of us in one room.
The only good memory I have of that period is watching “River of New Return” with Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe on the black-and-white motel TV. I don’t believe they had remote control units for televisions back then, and to his credit, my father, despite whatever frustrations he may have been feeling, controlled himself beautifully and never even considered pushing my 10-year-old sister and me (I was 12) out of the room, down the stairs and out onto the dirty sidewalks of Broadway.