Waiting outside the TOYS R US complex, I saw the Hispanic woman letting her little daughters out of the van as the Asian woman –her car adjacent to the van– climbed into her SUV unseen. The green SUV’s wheels were on an angle, and I was anticipating…tomorrow’s melodramatic Local News headline.

It didn’t happen, thank goodness. Backing up, the Asian woman missed both girls by  couple of inches.

The mother never did take in the full impact of her near miss. No more than the Los Gatos Mom appreciated how lucky she was in Vasona Park yesterday…when an overweight teenager, yawing wildly in the kids’ part of the play area, squeezed by her wandering tot at 'x' miles per hour on a backswing.

Sometimes you have to hold your child’s hand.

I always palm some part of tiny Marcel’s body when walking through a parking lot…even if I can’t actually touch him.

Like what has to be done for his half-brother, no longer a teen, who’s recently escaped serious trouble, narrowly surviving the trouble he did cause himself, and everyone around him. He needs supervision.

Oh, brother, what has to be done that’s not being done. Goodness.

Big Brother’s another case entirely. The Brother who bears no flesh, but who must eat flesh to live, is not visible, let alone touchable. In fact, if we extend our hand, BB is as likely to devour the fingers that keep Him going, that feed It. As likely to pave a parking lot over us as nourish our families. More likely to park right on top of you and your loved ones.

Certainly this can’t be controlled.

One can’t even talk straight to such an It. No, this case requires selective misdirection, indiscretion. Such a relation calls for telling the Asian woman to go right ahead and back up…fast…with her wheels turned the other way. Demands that one engage a mother in the park…in distracting conversation…whilst watching her precious ones getting closer to aphotic oscillation.

There is only one question. Whose blood do you share?

Richard Oxman, dueleft@yahoo.com, believes that this prose poem, this tome reduced to a few lines, is a good companion piece to his "Change/Through/Exchange?" article, a recent entry on his www.oxtogrind.org site. He also writes for http://www.parisgraves.com.