QUESTIONING A WELL-MEANT "MONDAY MOANING"...

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Monday Moaning section, the newspaper's readers can briefly register their complaints. Today a Lakewood, OH resident wrote:

"I am deeply saddened by the treatment I witnessed of a very small child by a caregiver or father... (after the child had) happily wandered into the Hallmark store at Great Northern Mall alone, smiling and happy. Soon afterward a man entered the store and commanded him to come to him... I clearly heard the 'whomp, whomp, whomp' as he proceeded to hit the child hard three times.... He then picked the sobbing child up and carried him out of the store so quickly, there was no time to protest the harsh treatment of the innocent and curious child."



I can visualize the whomp-whomp-whomp. Were they three hits on the child's rump?

Did it occur to this witness that the father had possibly been worried sick, in that large and always crowded mall, to find his toddler suddenly missing?

Did it occur to this witness, if the child had not been found and something terrible had happened, that the father would possibly have been charged with child endangerment?

Did it occur to this witness that many an "innocent and curious child" has wandered away from a parent ... into serious, if not fatal, trouble?