I Saw a Dad Run Over His Toddler

I’ll never forget that day back in 1998 for as long as I live. I still think about it 25 years later and can’t seem to get it out of my mind. The day I saw a father run over his own child.

You see a lot of crazy things, working retail in shopping malls. I had worked at three other retail sales jobs from 1993 until 1998. I’d seen a number of really sketchy situations, but nothing was quite like this. This was unbelievable.

I’d seen a store employee chasing a shoplifter on foot before tackling her like Ronnie Lott from those all-time great Joe Montana-led 49ers teams. You could never get away with taking down a criminal by tackling them these days.

I saw a bird flying around the inside of our store. I was once asked to stay overnight to supervise a construction crew during a remodeling of our Payless Shoe Source location. (I promptly quit and walked home) I’d even sold shoes to Batman, Mr. Adam West shortly before this incident.

Nothing came even close to this, however.

I understand that small children get out of control from time to time. They are tiny. Their little bodies wear out far more quickly than most adults. They don’t have the physical strength and stamina to endure long periods of walking. Then they lose their little minds when it becomes too much.

Shortly before this incident occurred, I remember working at Footlocker one afternoon in Twin Falls, Idaho. I heard it coming a mile away. It was faint at first, then became more and more loud as they walked closer to our store.

“I want it… I want it! I SAID, I WANT IT! I WANT IT!!!!!!!!”

This small child around four or five years old was tailing his mother and father, screaming. His father was holding a smaller-sized Kaybee Toys bag. It could have held a Beanie Baby, perhaps a G.I. Joe figure. Whatever was in the bag, the kid was really jonesin’ for it.

I saw the look on the father’s face. The mother seemed to be setting the pace, walking quickly toward the exit as the screaming child amped up the volume. I walked over to our store’s lease line to observe this Wild Kingdom moment.

Finally, the inevitable happened:

“BUT I WANT IT! I WANT IT! I WAAAAAAAAAAAANT IT!!!!!”

The dad spun a 180. “YOU WANT IT! YOU WANT IT! TOUGH SHIT!”

And with that, he slam-dunked the Kaybee bag into the nearby garbage can, grabbed the now-wailing kid by the arm, and pulled him to the exit.

It was over in about 20 seconds. Everyone in the mall stood there with their mouths open before erupting in a deafening cheer. The people sitting in the food court started doing The Wave.

Now I’m not one to advocate cruelty to animals. But this small pup learned a difficult lesson that day, inside the Magic Valley Mall. Don’t fuck with Pops. He don’t play that shit.

I watched for about 10 to 15 minutes to see if the mom or the dad would come back in to rescue the toy to give back to the small child later. Nope. This was an old-school dad. It was worth wasting $5 to $10 to teach this kid an important life lesson:

We don’t negotiate with terrorists.

As bad as this incident sounds and as difficult as it was to observe, I saw something even worse later that year. I was transferred to Salt Lake City to manage a Footlocker down there.

Faster than you can say, Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, I witnessed a shocking incident. I saw a man run over his own toddler. His flesh and blood. His seed.

This Grand Theft Auto-esque moment occurred about a month after I arrived. It was a day that seemed like any other. Until it wasn’t.

I heard a faint ruckus coming from a distance. My mind instantly flashed back to the Twin Falls incident. Christ, had this family also relocated to The Garment District, as I had? I felt a shiver run down my spine. A cold sweat formed on my forehead.

“I wanna ride! I WANNA RIDE! I WANNNNNNAAAAAA RIDDDDDEEEEEE!”

I ran to the lease line from behind the counter. The customer I was ringing up stood there with their Mastercard in hand, not sure what to do next. They said, “Uh, Sir?”

“JUST TAKE THE SHIT! ON THE HOUSE! I GOTTA SEE THIS!” I yelled back as I hurdled over my employee who was measuring an older woman’s foot, sizing her for some New Balance walking shoes.

I arrived at the front of our store, just in the nick of time. I saw a set of parents pushing a stroller with a baby in it. Tazmanian Toddler was losing his shit, demanding to be put into the stroller alongside his baby brother or sister, whatever that ambiguous bundle of joy was. It was a two-seater.

The parents had the same look as the man in Twin Falls. They picked up the pace to hurriedly get to the doors leading to the parking lot. Then I couldn’t believe what I saw next.

This kid must have been the Usain Bolt of little tow-headed toddlers. He overtook his parents in a sprint and ran directly in front of them. He flopped right in front of the path of the oncoming stroller!

I didn’t want to look, but I had to look. Kind of like when you drive by a car accident and see someone lying on the ground.

The father didn’t even break stride. He ran over his son with the stroller like a steamroller. And kept walking. I saw the baby turn and give his/her brother a tiny middle finger. It was glorious.

Usain had a look of “What the fuck?” before hitting DEFCON 1 with his shrieking. He jumped up and set an Olympic record for catching his parents in record time, just as they went through the mall exit doors.

I chuckled to myself as I walked back inside my store. I knew the father hadn’t caused any internal bleeding to his young son. He lifted the stroller just a bit so as not to hurt his child, but to graze him with the wheels and bruise only his pride.

I put both incidents down in my mental notebook and told myself that if I was ever the father of a little hell-raiser, that THIS was the style of parenting I’d have to use.

At least once. Kids have a funny way of learning lessons quickly when they attempt to butt heads with a fed-up, pissed-off parent. &:^)