The week before Thanksgiving 2015 Jolene, Johanna and myself travelled to Chattanooga Tennessee. My mom lives in Chattanooga, so occasionally we travel out to see them. This time we decided to go around the holidays. We decided to stay at the The Read House Historic Inn And Suites. The Read House is a nice rustic hotel with a great restaurant attached. It’s located in the heart of the city. Porters Steak House has great food and is located in the hotel. Porter’s is expensive, but well worth a meal if you can afford it. During one of our nights there Johanna had one of her epic tantrums.
While visiting with my family we did many activities. That, combined with jet lag Johanna was exhausted. We arrived late at night to our hotel. After unsuccessful attempts to get Johanna to bed she began to throw a tantrum. She cried and cried with no end in site. Since it was around 11:00 p.m. I decided to take her outside the hotel so that we wouldn’t awaken other hotel guests. Johanna went into complete hysteria. As I walked down the halls with her screaming in my arms people opened their doors as I walked by.
As we went down the elevator I can only image how many people we woke up with her screaming. I decided to walk across the street to my parked car. I was hoping that the change of scenery and maybe a car ride would calm her down. In the process of leaving the hotel a lady called the police on me. The police response time was impeccable. Jolene was a little ways away following behind me. Apparently it looked as if I was stealing a child.
About a minute after arriving to my car a police car arrived and stopped behind me to detain me. I had to explain my situation. While running outside I forgot to take my identification. Jolene came running up behind us also trying to explain that she was just having a tantrum and that indeed she was my daughter. After a long discussion he finally let me go. Now I didn’t get arrested. To the police officer’s credit he was just doing his job. A lady down the street called the cops on me presupposing a child abduction.
Needless to say the police finally left. Johanna continued to cry for another 15 minutes. We drove around and looked for some food to see if maybe that might silence her. Sometimes she gets very grumpy when she is hungry, which runs in the family. She won’t tell us she is hungry. We went to McDonalds to get her some chicken nuggets and fries. She only ate two French fries. She finally calmed down so that we could go back to the hotel. After some more bucking she did finally go to sleep.
It gets me to wonder, had it been my wife carrying a child screaming would the police have been called? Is it instinctive for people to consider the only possible reason a child is crying around a man is because they are stealing the child? Do fathers steal children more than mothers? I don’t know the answer nor the statistics. I do commend the officer for assessing the situation. However, if my wife didn’t show up I probably would have gone to jail. Where has society gone that fathers are preemptively presumed a perpetrator, an aggressor, a pedophile, a child abductor, and an oppressor? I fear for my boy, because he too will probably will be deemed an oppressor before he’s already born. Moral of the story, don’t go outside your home, or hotel with a screaming child if you are a man.
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