The other day I was parked up in a car park which serves a lot of retail and fast food outlets. There was a van in which a couple of men were sitting near to us with the door open. There was a preschooler with them, but he was out wandering round the car park and not a lot of attention was being paid to him. Quite a worry really as there were cars moving around in the car park ,even if it wasn’t that busy and they were parked up in a fairly quiet corner. I was already getting the impression that they weren’t responsible adults.
Then the child was given a plastic bottle and seemed to be sent to dispose of it. Now I wouldn’t send a child across a car park to perform such a task anyway, but if I did that in a park or similar it would be with a bin in mind and in sight. The child walked over to the bushes on the edge of the car park and threw the bottle into them. The men saw this and allowed it. I did think of picking them up on this, but decided it wasn’t the thing to do, especially with my own child with me. I suspect it would have made no difference to their attitude. Afterall if they didn’t care about the child’s safety, they weren’t going to care about him dropping litter. It wouldn’t even register on their sense of priorities.
Why are there people like this though? I really can’t understand their mentality at all. They aren’t the sort of people anyone decent wants to mix with or even share the same country with. It doesn’t seem much to ask that everyone have some basic standards of behaviour and stick to them.