Justin's Near Death Experience

Every day (well almost every day, sometimes Kevin is home and we drive, sometimes Kevin's grandma is around and she drives us) we walk to and from Jakey's school to drop him off in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. There are ALOT of parents that seem to feel comfortable with their 6-9 year olds walking alone, I'm not one of them. We walk about 0.75 miles each way, so it ends up being about 3 miles per day when we go both ways. At one point there is a busier intersection that has a four way stop sign with a crossing guard provided by the school.

This crossing guard and Justin have become really good friends. He is approximately 70 years old and just a really, really nice guy. Justin runs ahead a little to play with him while waiting for me to catch up, the crossing guard gives Justin his stop sign to use as a bat and throws these little acorn things that fall off the trees on that street as balls and they play baseball while I finish walking the last house or so to the corner. (I walk slowly for both of their benefit, they both really enjoy this.) Justin goes on and on about the crossing guard at home and really likes him, he even made him a Valentine's Day card. He asks me every day "Can I run ahead to play with my friend?" Loves the guy. And he really is a sweet, grandfatherly, man to Justin and the other kids, he dotes on Jayden as well.

Today, as usual, we went to pick up Jakey and Justin ran ahead to the corner and played some baseball with his friend until I caught up, then we crossed one way, then the other. The crossing guard went out 1/2 way across the street and whistled for us to come, Justin ran to the other side like usual so that he could gather more of the acorn thingies to throw to his friend, the crossing guard. So Justin's 3/4 of the way across the street, the crossing guard is 1/2 across the street, and I'm about 1/4 across the street when this lady just started coming across the intersection in her car, headed STRAIGHT FOR JUSTIN. The crossing guard started blowing his whistle and yelling for her to stop, I was screaming for Justin to come back, everyone was honking their horns to get her attention, the whole intersection just freaked out for a moment there. The lady stopped literally INCHES from Justin. He could have easily reached over and touched the grill of her car. The crossing guard and I had both lunged for him and I dragged him across the rest of the street and was having a little breakdown while the crossing guard and other drivers were chewing out the lady for being so careless. After a few minutes the crossing guard says, "Your older son is about to get out of school, you have to go or call someone or something." So we headed towards Jakey's school.

Once we got Jakey we headed back the way we had come. When we got to the intersection Justin was so upset he wouldn't cross, at all. Jakey had to push Jayden and I had to carry Justin across the intersection. Right as we got onto the corner the way we needed to be facing the crossing guard says to Justin, "I'm sorry about what happened back there, are you ok buddy?" and Justin said, "Don't talk to me, I'm not your friend anymore!" I told the crossing guard how sorry I was for what Justin said, and thanked him for everything he did to help and told Justin, "He did everything he could, this wasn't his fault, it was that woman's fault for not paying attention." and he said, "No it's his fault, crossing guards are supposed to keep you safe and he didn't keep me safe." The poor crossing guard just looked so sad and hurt by Justin's words, he had to go though because more kids needed to cross so we left.

I feel awful, I've been talking with Justin about this all night, he still firmly believes the crossing guard failed to keep him safe and that it's his fault Justin was almost hit today. I feel so bad for Justin, but I feel awful for the crossing guard! We're making some blueberry muffins to take to him in the morning, hopefully I can convince Justin to not say anything rude or mean to the crossing guard, the poor guy really did his best, it wasn't his fault!