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Connie Cronley’s attempt to be helpful backfires.
Let me tell my side of it. Perhaps the best spin I can put on The Incident is that I was trying to do a good thing, always a slippery slope.
I was in a department store when I heard a mother shouting at her child. A mother with a baby in her arms was standing at the top of the escalator and yelling at a little girl. Yelling in a very loud voice, a voice any actor praying for projection would have envied.
She was shouting, “Get on it! You have to get on! You almost made me fall.”
The little girl was cowering in fear. Well, who wouldn’t? Someone screaming at you in public.
Another woman with more children stood at the bottom of the escalator shouting, “Come on! Get on!” Lots of exclamation marks.
Suddenly, I thought of two things:
1. When you see a parent being abusive in public, instead of glaring, turning away or chastising, you should offer to help.
2. A woman told me she has 100 percent success when she says, “I’m a grandmother. Let me help.”
So I sprang into action. I went to the mother and said, “I’m a grandmother. Let me help.” That’s not exactly true, but the literal genealogy of being a step-grandmother was too complicated for the urgency of the moment.
The mother said to me, “She’s scared of escalators. So am I. I fell on one once.”
I said to the mother in a calm voice, “I can help.” And I said to the little girl in a merry tone, “Let’s go down the escalator together, OK? On the count of three. One, two, three — big step. Here we go.”
Well, I took a big step. Complications ensued.
Later, in the car, here’s the way my companion described The Incident. My companion and eyewitness, wouldn’t you know it, was my ex-husband. Who enjoys our misadventures more than ex-spouses?
He said, “Look at it from the little girl’s point of view. Out of nowhere comes this crazy lady who grabs her by the hand, counts one-two-three and tries to drag her onto the escalator.
“And then you got on the escalator,” he continued this painful account.
“You got on in a big step, but the little girl pulled away and jumped back. There you were on the escalator alone. But did you ride it down like a normal person? No, no.
“For some reason, you tried to get back to the top. Scrambling, falling, clutching the handrail. Your arms were flailing. Your eyes were wild. One step up, two steps down. Stumbling to your knees. It was like a wind tunnel; you couldn’t make any progress.
“The little girl thought you were coming to get her and started screaming, trying to get away. The mother was hanging on to her, but then baby began slipping out of her arms and it was crying.
“That’s when you fell and cut your foot. You almost lost a foot trying to show her how safe an escalator is. But did you give up? Oh, no. You kept going until finally you did get to the top.
“And there you were, standing on one foot like a crane with the other foot bleeding. The mother and the children just stood there looking at you, not saying a word. And what happened then? They just walked away quietly and got on the elevator and went downstairs.”
He said, “That little girl is going to be traumatized for the rest of her life. Not just about escalators but about women jumping out of nowhere, counting one-two-three and trying to drag her off. It was like something out of ‘Hansel and Gretel.’”
My companion found this very funny. All I can say is, I was trying to help.
Turns out I was right. I later read about the American Humane Association’s new Front Porch Project to train ordinary people how to intervene in cases of child neglect or abuse (physical, sexual or emotional). It has been brought to Tulsa by the Parent Child Center, a local child abuse and prevention program.
I’m going to ask when the next training session is. I’ll confide that I may need extra training.
