Why me?

I was at Target a few months ago with my wife and children.. We were Christmas shopping, and my wife had gone off to look at toys for the kids, and I was keeping them busy in another section of the store, the kids' book section. Then I heard a "Psst!" from around the corner. I turned and saw a woman peering from behind a wall, waving me closer.

"Hi!" she whispered. "That's my son over there!" She pointed, and I saw a boy not older than 4 or 5, on the next aisle down. "I've been watching him for the past five minutes. He's driving me nuts! Every time he gets seperated from me, he doesn't even notice! I've been watching him, hoping he'll see that I'm not there and get scared, but he doesn't! Would you do me a big favor? Would you walk over to him and say 'Excuse me, little boy, but do you know where your mother is?' for me, so he'll realize I'm not around, and hopefully scare him enough to not get seperated from me?"

I smiled at her and said that of course I wouldn't mind, and as I turned and walked toward her boy, I thought, wait, did you just pick me because I'm the biggest, ugliest, scariest looking guy you could find? "Yeah, excuse me, sir? You look like you're a child molestor, could you do me a favor? Because if you won't, I really don't know who I could fall back on, you're the only person that looks like a pedophile. Oh, and don't touch my kid-- I'm watching you. Creep." Gee, thanks, lady. Yeah, I'll go give your kid a scare. Then I'll go home and slash my wrists.

Of course, she most likely approached me because I was obviously a dad out with my kids. But I thought, what if I was a pedophile? No problem, lady. Yeah, thanks for telling me your kid's all alone. These aren't my kids, by the way, I was watching them because they'es alone and I was planning on kidnapping them too. You just gave me a two-fer! Gosh, I love Target. People just walk up to you and say hey! Take my kids!

So I approach the little boy. And I say, "Excuse me, little boy. Do you know where your mom is?"

The boy's eyes widened and he looked around, visibly distraught, obviously having assumed his mom was right there the entire time. "I can't find my mommy!" he said, startled. "YOU WILL HELP ME LOOK FOR HER." Which, you know, if you're trying to scare your four year old, is exactly what you want to hear. Especially if you'd asked the scariest, most child-molestoriest guy you could find to scare him.