Yesterday when I picked Judah up from school, I parked right by a Chevy Tahoe which had the motor running. As soon as I got out, I noticed that the driver was revving the engine while it was in park. It was then that I saw that there were two little boys, around 7 years old, and a baby in the car and no adult was in sight. It was in the 90s outside. When Judah's teacher greeted me at the door, I asked her if she knew where the parents were and she went to the car to try to handle the situation. It took me about five minutes to get my son's gear and when I went back out, the kids were still sitting in the car, revving the engine. Still no parents. The teacher had gone inside for a minute (I suppose to find the parents). When she came back out, and as I was putting Judah in my car, I saw the little boy pulling on the gear shift to go in reverse. We finally got them to open up the door (they'd refused the first time) and the teacher pulled all three of them out and took them inside.

I called the director of the school (my sister-in-law's mother) and told her what happened. She said she was aware of it, that it was not parental neglect, and that the mother had been trapped on the playground alone when the door locked behind her. She had to scale a fence to get back out and was hysterically crying.

I'm still confused about this sequence of events, such as how the kids got the keys, how they got in the car before she did, etc. Maybe she has more than 3 kids and was looking for her 4th or 5th? I have no idea. It seems incredibly irresponsible, even if unintended. I was positive that at any second, those kids were going to kick the Tahoe into gear and mow down all the pedestrians that cross the street there.

I'm sure she freaked right on out when she finally scaled the fence, got to her Tahoe, only to find her three children were no longer sitting in it.

There is no way in hell I would leave Judah alone in a car, with or without keys. I know he would drive away or someone would snatch him. Not to mention it's Texas. It's May. It's one block from an interstate highway. The whole situation had me feeling anxious for hours afterward.