Hard To Take
I feel pretty badly for Christopher Ratte and his seven-year-old son, Leo, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. They were having a great father-son outing the other day at Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers. Rushed as they arrived at the ballpark and in a hurry to find their seats, dad and junior made a quick stop at a concession stand where Christopher bought Leo a refreshing bottled lemonade.
I think the authorities at the ballpark in Detroit were right to step in when they saw a seven-year-old drinking alcohol throughout the game.
Fast forward a few hours to the top of the ninth inning. Father and son had snacked throughout the game on the usual -- hot dogs, peanuts -- and Leo had managed to finish about two-thirds of his lemonade. That's when a security guard approached the pair and asked Christopher if he had provided the beverage for Leo. "Of course," Mr. Ratte responded. At that point they took Leo away from his dad, trundled the terrified boy into an ambulance, transported him to a local hospital's emergency room, and removed him from his parents' custody for at least two days.
See, his father had unwittingly given Leo an alcoholic beverage: specifically, Mike's Hard Lemonade. It happened to be a product he had never heard of, much less purchased, before that day at the ballpark.
I had to chuckle when I saw this news report, and not because I'm mean or anything. As I already said, I feel terrible for Mr. Ratte (who I'm convinced made an honest mistake).
What I found amusing was that I know someone -- well over the legal age to consume alcohol but a teetotaler by conviction -- who made a similar mistake a few years ago on a hot summer day. He was at a friend's house and reached into the fridge, grabbed a lemonade, and chugged it down. He said it didn't taste out of the ordinary, but for some reason after he'd drained the bottle, he looked more closely at the label and realized what he'd done. It was a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade ... a product he'd never heard of until that day, much less bought, been offered, or imbibed. He was embarrassed because, like I said, he has a religious conviction about abstaining from alcohol. We, his friends, got a good laugh out of it and still tease him about it.
As for Mr. and Mrs. Ratte, the understandably heartbroken, frightened, and perplexed parents of Leo, social workers at the hospital said that while they believed Leo had ingested the alcohol by mistake, they still had to do their job and retain custody of him until a more thorough investigation could be carried out.
Ostensibly this would be to satisfy themselves that Leo's father did not take him to the Tigers game to get him drunk in front of thousands of people, make him sick, and possibly kill him.
As Leo's father himself pointed out in a news interview, if he was going to feed alcoholic beverages to his seven-year-old son on purpose, why would he do it over a period of several hours while sitting in a packed stadium?
Do me a favor. The next time you go out for dinner at a restaurant where alcohol is served, look around. Chances are you'll see at least one table where there are a set of what appear to be parents in the company of what appear to be their own small children. They'll all be eating a meal, and both parents will be drinking beer or wine. Unless you happen to be in Beverly Hills or Manhattan, you cannot believe they have a chauffeur waiting outside to drive them home or that they plan to call a taxi. One of those parents is going to get in the car after drinking and do the driving.
Remember to buckle those kiddies snugly in their carseats!
Don't get me wrong; I think the authorities at the ballpark in Detroit were right to step in when they saw a seven-year-old drinking alcohol throughout the game. But when the powers-that-be realized a terrible mistake had been made and that the whole thing was unintentional, once they confirmed the child had not been adversely affected I think they should have let him go home with his mom and dad. No harm, no foul. Truly. People mess up sometimes; dire consequences do not always ensue.
But what about parents who knowingly drink and drive ... and do so with small children in the car? Even if they say they are not impaired after one or two beers or a glass of wine, studies show that after consuming only one drink a person's capacity to make split-second decisions can be diminished. How much (or how little) impairment is "safe" when it comes to your own children? If someone had a teensy drink and wanted to drive my granddaughters around the corner, I'm pretty sure I'd do my impersonation of godzilla on the hood of their car. Complete with chest-beating and a bloodcurdling rebel yell for added drama.
And I'd tell them, hey ... when life hands you lemons, don't take it so hard.