Baby, Come Back
I had a very interesting experience upon leaving the gym yesterday morning – perhaps intriguing is the better word. There was a dad leaving the gym, walking out in front of me with his two young children, a 3 or 4 year-old girl and a very small toddler who had probably only just learned to walk, and was deriving great joy from running in that stiff-legged way that little ones do. As we all walked out into the parking lot, I was walking faster than them, and ended up passing them as they got into their SUV. Dad had gone around to the passenger side to let the little girl in, and was going back around to the driver side to put the toddler into the car. I was walking such that I passed the driver side first, and was now about 10 feet past the passenger side. Another car was leaving the parking lot, coming toward me.
Suddenly I heard the dad shouting in a frantic voice: “Johnny! Johnny! Johnny! No! No! No!”
Without thinking, I immediately realized that this toddler was continuing to enjoy his newfound running skills, and was rapidly toddling into the parking lot’s driving lane, ultimately into the path of the approaching car, to whom he would have been invisible, as small as he was. With no thought involved, I stepped in front of the approaching car, holding up my right hand to stop the driver, and lunged backward with my left hand out to stop the toddler. Dad caught up with the tot before he got into the lane, and the car had been moving reasonably slowly, so she pretty much stopped, and all disaster was averted.
I walked away feeling intrigued – as I said, I reacted without any conscious thought; did I obey some deep seated human instinct to protect children – all children, even those I didn’t know, like this one? Or did my subconscious brain put my conscious in check and perform the rapid calculus that determined that the car moving as slowly as it was posed no immediate threat to me, and I could easily prevent the child from getting hurt? (I am assuming here that I have some sense of self-preservation…) So, was it human instinct to save babies (all babies, any babies), or thought process without thinking? Or both? I found the fact that I don’t really know rather intriguing.
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