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Bad Parenting

This morning as I was leaving a Jackson's Food Store with my morning beverage, a car pulled in beside me. There were two small kids in the backseat, and I immediately noticed one of them looked young and/or small enough to be in a booster seat as required by Idaho law. I also noticed that the windows in the car were tightly shut, and the two adults (sic...) in the front seat were both smoking. The male unit of what seemed to be a parental couple dashed inside and emerged with two packs of cigarettes and quickly lit another as he got into the car. I happened to catch the eye of the younger child, and he looked miserable. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors. Maybe those adults are great parents. Maybe those kids are very happy. But, behind the closed doors of that car with windows dingy from cigarette smoke, that poor little kid looked at me from behind clouds of second hand smoke, and he looked miserable and sad. And so was I.

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