JSexton, personal insults are not allowed in MPSIMS. Don’t do this again.
Evidently it’s not just American men who are afraid:
I have no doubt that the fear is somewhat widespread. My point is that I don’t think it a justified fear. That is, it would be extremely unlikely for someone to actually take action against a male.
Example: there is a park nearby my house. I often take my kids there and let them play, which means that I’m a male, alone, in his thirties, hanging out on a park bench. I don’t see the same people there much (meaning the majority of visitors have never seen me before either) and yet I’ve never encountered hostility or suspicion, at least not openly. And I’ve interacted with kids that approached me, or tossed their balls back to them, or petted their dog, and so on.
The common fear is that doing that would result in kids being snatched away from me with glares and mutterings sent my way. Never happened.
throw a monkey wrench at the kid.
If he can dodge that he can dodge anything. That skill will come in very handy in later years in PE classes 
IMO, DuperDad (yes, I meant to type that) overreacted because DuperDad just realized how little he was watching Junior. Maybe his attention was caught by the encroachment of crab grass on the lawn or that hot new neighbor or (even) a loose gutter. I’ll bet his rxn had more to do with his feeling of “oh shit!” than anything to do with the OP.
As for DuperMom–she just sounds like yet another paranoid suburban mom. I’m a wee tired of them, having spent the last 19 years hearing all about how unsafe the world is and all. I know moms who won’t let their 12 year olds ride their bikes OFF the driveway. It’s insane and is not helping the child learn how to negotiate reality, but that’s another thread.
I can understand why the OP decided against getting the ball. I’m peeved at DuperDad–where there hell was he? I didn’t let my kids play in the front yard (we don’t even have sidewalks on our street). The cars go too fast and some drivers don’t watch out for kids. It’s too risky (NOT because the kid will be snatched, but because of the human vs. car=dead human thing).
I can think of one occasion where I intentionally over-reacted to my friend’s child walking out in front of a car (said kid did it all the bloody time at the age of 8). You need to teach your kids road safety, and occasionally that can mean scaring them a little - if they’d walked out thirty seconds later, they’d have been splatted, so you use it as an object lesson.
Also, what seemed like 30 seconds to you might have seemed a lot longer to the person whose kid had just walked out into traffic.
Screaming at you once he’d picked the kid up might be out of order - and might not be - given the terror someone might feel when their child is about to be hit by a car - but the rest of it is just parenting. Or even uncling or aunting or godparenting or whatever.
You could have picked up the ball without ever going near the child. You could also have got out of the car and called out to see who was there to take the child off the road. I understand your fears about being mistaken for a paedoophile (it’s understandable, though sad, that you might be afraid of grabbing hold of an unknown kid), but your fears went a little too far in this example.
I don’t know if anyone else mentioned this, but another thing to thing about is that if you were stopped for a full thirty seconds, Superdad may have been over reacting because he just realized how long he hasn’t been paying attention to junior, where is junior by the way OH MY GOD HE’S ABOUT TO WALK INTO THE STREET SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT. Also, as a father with a toddler, I understand, sorry, but your feelings are completely meaningless to me when I see my child at the edge of the road, all dad sees is a car coming.
ETA didn’t we have a thread some time back about someone getting out of their car, handing the kid their ball back and then have a parent screaming at said driver?
I’ll give myself one chance to find it, but I’m not gonna wait 300 seconds to try it again. Must choose search terms carefully.
Okay, maybe, but at least once its over, can’t you go over to the driver and apologize for being as screaching ass towards the driver who did nothing wrong, and as a matter of fact went OUT of his way to do the right thing?
I don’t go near kids that I don’t know for the same reasons stated in the thread. If I were the OP I probably would have got out of my car and tossed the ball back in the yard, but if Duperdad decided to verbally abuse me he’d be witness to all of the obscenities I could muster right back at him.
Theres the opposite of Dupermom that I lived around once. I was in my 20s, living in my grandparents house (grandpa was gone, grandma had moved in with my mother so I was living in the house during the summer after college with a friend of mine) Across the street was Idiot Girl. Idiot Girl’s husband was at work, and their toddler was playing in their small yard. Idiot Girl was inside of the house. Junior’s ball rolled into the street and my elderly neighbor went out, got the ball and Junior who followed it, and put him back in his own yard. I was sitting on my porch with my buddy, listening to radio and drinking a few cold ones. We saw our neighbor repeat this THREE times before he knocked on her door and told Idiot Girl she needed to watch her son. (Good ol’ Mr. A…he’s passed on now, but he was a nice old man, and he loved children. Used to dress up like Santa on Xmas Eve and entertain kids at Xmas parties.)
We didn’t live on a busy street, but it was a street nonetheless. The kid should not have been unsupervised in the yard. Idiot Girl says to my elderly neighbor she felt it was safe because *"**Jolly Roger **and his friend are outside…they can watch him". *
I yelled across the street “Look, he ain’t my kid. Watch him yourself instead of watching soap operas.”.
My friend also added “Plus We’re drinking, stupid! Do you want US watching your kid?”.
I can understand that. But as a man with no children who had stopped his car for 30 seconds because your toddler is unsupervised by the street, I would probably react like WTF? I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO DESERVE THIS ABUSE! AS A MATTER OF FACT I DID THE RIGHT THING!?.
Also Dad’s misdirected rage would make his feelings and concerns completely irrelevant to me, he’d go to the top of my "Idiot/Jackass/ People that should not have children list and be treated as such on the spot. If that means junior gets to hear his father described in nasty ways on the street, well, golly gee, too bad. Having kids doesn’t particularly give you a ***“Get out of being an ass for free card”. ***
I’d have to check, but I wouldn’t doubt it. My neighbor here has a few kids and sometimes their toys and balls end up in my yard. I told them they were free to hop over the fence and get 'em, but I don’t go near the kids.
Yeah, I hate that. Why 300 seconds?
They’d probably get a ‘sorry my fault’ wave from me, and if the oppertunity presents itself I’d tell them I was sorry and that all I saw my kid at the edge of the road and a car coming. I’d also assume the driver would understand my feelings, even if I was in the house blasting heroin up my arms and drinking stright out of last nights keg when it was happening, I’d still be allowed to be freaked out by the situation.
Also, kids move quickly and quietly. It only takes a few seconds for a ball to roll down the driveway, so it’s not that you have to be completely oblivious for this situation to occur, having your back turned while you light the grill or re-aiming the garage door opener sensors is all it takes to draw your attention away for a few seconds.