The smell of burning flesh.

Nearly every night for the past 10 days, The Weather Channel has recounted numerous stories where children (and even pets) have died in hot cars. From what I can recall from the information reported, only a handful of these preventable 'vehicular hyperthermia' tragedies were ruled as 'child negligence'; the rest were ruled (preliminarily) as 'accidental' with no charges filed.

Bullshit.

Every. Damn. One. should be ruled as negligence, with whomever at fault locked up--preferably in a non-air conditioned cell.

Now, I am NOT a parent and I was raised as the only child, but not once--NOT ONCE--did my working single mom EVER leave me behind ANYWHERE. She never even once forgot to pick me from pre-school or dance rehearsal or from the Kids' Klub at Sportslife gym.

The excuse for these recent "accidental" deaths is "the parents' routines got altered for the day." Meaning, for example, one parent who usually doesn't take the kid for the day ended up doing do so and thus "forgot" or one parent thought the other was removing the child from the car or vice versa. The defense is, "Well, every parent says, 'That will never happen to me' but obviously it does, and until you have children, you have no idea how hectic your life will be and what will happen."

Bullshit.

• A two-year-old was left in a hot car for NINE HOURS OUTSIDE A FAMILY MEMBER'S HOME. NINE HOURS.


• Another toddler died of heat stroke after a neighbor picked up the boy to take him to HER day care center. She discovered him when she went back out to her car SIX HOURS LATER.

Last year, 42 children died while locked in hot cars. So far, with only 2 weeks into summer, 17 children have already died from vehicular hyperthermia. Of the 414 vehicular hyperthermia deaths in the last 11 years, more than half of the cases were deemed "forgotten."

Every single one of us knows how desperately we crank up the A/C the second we re-enter the car on a summer afternoon. In 80 degree heat, the inside of a car reaches 109 degrees after just 20 minutes ; 123 degrees after 50 minutes. With the current heat wave and drought gripping the nation, these unfortunate children were locked in cars where the outside temperatures were in excess of 80 and even 90 degrees. What makes parents think their 18-month-old or five-year-old or golden retriever are impenetrable to the heat?

Only 17 states have laws prosecuting those who leave children in hot cars, "accidental" or not, and only 7 more states are currently working on getting such legislation passed. How many more children have to die this year?--next year?--before all 50 states no longer allow "accidental" or "forgotten" vehicular hyperthermia deaths?

Now, returning to The Weather Channel broadcasts for a moment. For each report, the meteorologists offered advice and interviewed various experts in an attempt to prevent any more children dying from hot cars. 'Leave a note on your dash or a stuffed toy in the passenger seat reminding you your child is in the back' was one such comment; 'Place your briefcase or purse in the backseat instead of next to you' was another. They even discussed a product called ChildMinder that syncs your child's car seat up with your car. If you walk away from your car with your child still locked inside, the ChildMinder device on the car seat beeps loudly as you walk away, reminding you that your Precious Baby is sleeping like an angel in the back.

The fact that products like ChildMinder even have to exist is abhorrent. The fact that over 50% of all vehicular hyperthermia deaths are ruled "accidental" is even more so.

The pain, agony, guilt, and inexplicable grief the parents or caregivers will have to live with for the rest of their lives is NOT enough. They're child-killers now.

Let 'em fry.

A Job in the Absurd

**Much of my early blogs will be either re-posts from other social networking sites or writing assignments I completed during my college years (2003-2006). This particular post comes from a "Setting" writing exercise assigned in Short Story Writing ('05).**

With the bend of an opposable appendage and the clichéd flick of a switch, the fluorescent lights, screaming with elegance between the cheap Styrofoam tiles, illuminate the geometric room. Taking their cue from the lights, the purple and yellow walls pop out to say hello—and won’t pop back in again until midnight. It’s finally sunny, but the idyllic outdoors contrasts sharply with the dark static from the seven working TVs that every morning call to mind the opening lines of a William Gibson novel. The 28 double-paned windows display their nakedness openly through sassy red frames. On clear days like today, the sun glares at the checkout counters, indiscriminately throwing its rays in a thousand different directions on the transparent plastic of a thousand different DVDs. In any other situation, the store would make for a glorious prism and people would come from miles around and pay the average hourly wage as the price of admission in order to witness the ricocheting ballet of light. But this isn’t any other situation and prisms are made of glass. The shards force the employees in their stylish eggplant, collared shirts to wear sunglasses and squint at the computer monitors from a proximity that mothers swear will make children go blind. It’s a windy 40 degrees outside, but the chill is not felt indoors. It’s hard for teeth to chatter and goosebumps to honk when the air conditioning constricts the feeling of your extremities. The low hums of the soda refrigerators soothe to the point of distraction, but when they quit their tune every 30 minutes, the recognition of the obvious silence is more bothersome. The silence is usually tolerable, as the doors chime upon all entrances and exits, but the doorjamb is broken again, and the right door bulges between its left twin and the outside air, adding to the draft and the silence. At least the customer service is warm. (Unless Katherine is working. Then you’re better off fighting the polar bears outside than contending with that shrew.)

Nineties computer hardware and a 2005 laser printer (but Dude, there are Dell CPUs!) sit defiantly on countertops that pretend to be white but instead show a decade’s worth of scuffs and carvings, at least on the parts that have not grown ashamed and retreated behind mail, magazines, clipboards, and months of unfiled paperwork that would make an audit this year total hell.

Art deco styles with 2005 upgrades. Warhol colors in a sedate shopping center. Resilient ‘90s computers with broken Y2K televisions. If it wasn’t so endearing in its warped acquirement of coziness, the building would laugh at its own absurdity.

And the clientele is just as ridiculous.

This is my blog.

There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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This is a constant, organic work in progress, so please leave comments, suggestions, etc.

Content may or may not be limited to theatre, music, film, and pop culture; it all depends on the Muses, but hopefully it will become video-based in the near future as I get better at--and can afford--video blogging.

Tell your friends!

~Lauren