Was going to post this last night but I was still a bit shaken up over the whole thing.
FTR I drive a Mazda MPV… a minivan. Certainly not the largest vehicle out there, but large enough that 1) I’m super-conscious about situations like this, and 2) It’s big enough to see me- you can’t really say “oh, somehow I missed that big vehicle.”
I was at one of the local Wal-Marts, getting ready to back out of my parking space. It was around 5pm, a nice sunny day, and the parking lot wasn’t too crowded. Checked the driver’s side- nothing. While I was in the store a larger van- one without back windows- had parked next to me, so I was going slower than normal since I simply couldn’t see on the passenger side. I was more than halfway out of the spot, almost to the point where I’d have a view of any traffic coming on that side, when I saw a flash go past the back of my van. I immediately hit the brakes, thinking “WTF was THAT?” and looked around to the driver’s side, where I saw that it had been a little girl, about 9, running to her mom’s car. Just as I was thinking how lucky it was I hadn’t hit her, there was a tremendous bang on the side of my van- hard enough to actually rock it. If I hadn’t been literally standing on the brakes after the near-miss, my foot would have probably slipped off the pedal.
Ah… that would be the little girl’s brother, about 8, who has just run full-tilt into me, hard enough to ::bounce:: off the car and land flat on his back on the pavement. :eek: He picked himself up, crying, and limped off to join his sister, who was enjoying a good laugh 1) at his expense, and 2) at the fact that she’d beat him to the car (oh, so they’d been racing through the parking lot).
I pulled forward, back into the spot, and got out intending to check on the lad. As I come around the side of my car, about 30-40 feet back is mom, walking toward her car (and me) with babe-in-arms. I can tell she’s mom, because the sister (still laughing) is asking her if she saw what happened, and wasn’t it funny. I approach her, and get as far as “Ma’am…” when she does the infamous hand-in-face thing and says “He’s fine.” I can see the kid isn’t fine- he’s still crying, holding his head (I don’t know if he had time to bring his hands up to soften the blow- he may have rammed head-first into the car), and considering the force with which he hit me and the ground, he’s got to be sore and probably bruised. By this point the woman has already passed me, and I follow- still trying to get her attention. She ignored me. I told her rapidly retreating backside that she may want to take the boy to the hospital, and asked her if she at least wanted my phone number for any bills. By this time we’ve garnered quite the crowd… the woman unlocked her car, pushed the two older kids in and practically threw the younger child in the back with them, got into her car, and drove off. Leaving me standing in the middle of the parking lot lane, confused and quite shaken, with a bunch of also-confused people.
I feel awful about this. I can’t stop wondering if the kid is actually okay, or if she took him to at least get checked out. I know kids are pretty resiliant, but this wasn’t a simple bump-on-the-knee thing. I was on call last night and kept an eye out in the ERs for them, but they didn’t come in while I was there. I am kicking myself for not getting the woman’s tag number- I was just so shocked and she left so quickly that I didn’t have time. I can’t think of anything else I could have done- should I go to the police and file an incident report, in case one of the bystanders got my plate and files a hit-and-run?
::sigh:: This guilt is really making the lapsed Catholic in me just feel all warm-n-fuzzy. 
-BK
