Give Her a Break

Can we please give the Cincinnati Zoo mom a break.  I’m really tired of hearing about this incident.  It’s a shame Harambe was killed but the boy is alive so I would call that a happy ending.  I think the Cincinnati Zoo mom is a first class space cadet.  I don’t know what the heck she was doing while her child approached the fence to the gorilla habitat, climbed over it ran over a patch of grass and the jumped into a moat.  She definitely needed to be paying more attention to her child.

I don’t have children and haven’t spent a great deal of time with them so I don’t have any stories about losing children or having them destroy things while I’m not looking.  But I was a child myself once and I have memories of my own childhood mischief.  I guess all of these people that want the Cincinnati Zoo mom prosecuted have ideal parents and were ideal or non ambulatory children themselves.

I remember as a child going grocery shopping with my mother.  I got lost in the grocery store every week.  I would walk around crying until a store employee saw me and then they would walk with me to the register and announce that Shannon was looking for her mom.  I also got lost at an amusement park once.  I was much older but I still walked around aimlessly crying and amusement park employees had to come to my aid.

I was a fairly mild mannered child and I would consider my parents to be reasonably responsible people but I started my fair share of drama.  I remember smoking cigarette butts at my older cousin’s house when I was around seven.  I drank Bacardi rum at my dad’s house when I was around ten.  I found a gun under my dad’s bed when I was around thirteen.  I nearly electrocuted myself when I was three or so by sticking tweezers in a light socket.  I had wet hair at the time.  Instead of frying myself I blew a fuse in the house and the lights all went dark.

I also remember nearly setting the house on fire with a Christmas angel when I was around the same age.  I put the cardboard angel on a lamp lightbulb which was hidden with a lamp shade.  My parents and I left the house for the evening and when we came back our little angel was smoking because the lamp was left on.  I also chewed on a glass thermometer once and nearly ingested mercury.

So please stop with all the self righteous criticism.  Your parents were not perfect and your younger self was probably just as naughty as the child that ended up eye to eye with Harambe.