Pink Polyester Lifelines...Oh, The Horror!

If you were one of the fifty people rubber-necking at us on Lackland Road yesterday, then you can tune out; go read something else. If you are wondering why two parents walking with the two toddlers on an early fall day could almost cause car accidents, I guess I’ll have to tell you…

We had the girls on leashes.

Okay…lifelines. Whatever. Sugar coat it with politically correct names, but it won’t change the fact that a harness around the waist of a child, with a polyester strap leading to my hand, is a human leash.

I can already hear the collective gasp; how inhumane!

The only thing that made me gasp was the price of these simple gadgets. Fifteen dollars! Each! If I would’ve opened the box while standing in Babies R’ Us, I surely would have put them back and went next door to the pet aisle at Wal-mart, and purchased the components for homemade baby leashes at a fraction of the cost. I’m sure I could’ve even got them in pink. Once I was home though, it wasn’t worth twenty bucks and the expended energy to go back to BRU, then to Wally world, and then home to create my ‘lifelines’. No thanks. It’s like making your own baby food…saving a little cash isn’t always worth the aggravation.

So, why does a women with two arms need to leash her child? Because I only have two arms…but I have two babies…and they are fast (the babies—not my arms). And rarely are they traveling in the same direction.

They are plum sick of being strapped into a stroller; at 22 months they love to walk, fall down, and overall explore God’s creation. I cannot fight their instinct for independence; but for safety and sanity’s sake, it must be controlled…harnessed if you will.

There are also many places that a double stroller is just too cumbersome. For instance—church. Our church is a frillion years old, in the city, with on street parking. Imagine me getting Abby out of her car seat, and then going around the vehicle to retrieve Reagan…what do I do with the Abby? Evil SUV’s and the boogeyman are lurking out there, and even though they may chew on their leashes like canines, they have not mastered the command to ‘stay’. Tethering her to my waist seems like a better option than watching her try to hail a cab while I fumble with Reagan’s asinine car seat straps.

Reactions have been mixed concerning the ‘leashes’, but honestly, the rubbernecking and whispers don’t bother me. Walk a mile in my shoes. Chasing their size five Buster Brown’s.

Admit it…you’d leash em’ too!