Cops Are Called When Mom Refuses to Pick Up Kids, 12 & 15, from Local Library

Hi Folks! Just a quickie: The kids in this Michigan story, 12 and 15, walked to the library on their own. When it was time to go, the temperature had fallen and, according to this article, “library staff” would not allow them to walk home. So they called their mom to come get them. She was busy at their grandmother’s and said no.  Next thing you know:

The children were taken to Farmington Hills Police headquarters at 11 Mile and Orchard Lake Roads. The officer spoke to their mother, who said she was upset that the children called for a ride seven minutes before the library closed. The report indicated the officer told the mother when she picked up the children that a report would be filed.

How outrageous is this? Let me count the ways:

1 – The children were ready to walk home but were not allowed. Why not? They were game.  They’re not babies. Yes, they might have been cold. But maybe that means next time they’ll bring their coats.

2 – The cops and library staff both assume that moms can and should drop anything they’re doing to come to the aid of their kids, even teens.  This makes sense in an emergency — come to the hospital, quick! But for chauffeuring? What if the mom was at work?

3 – It sounds like the library was closing and, with the mom not coming by, the staff didn’t know where to put the kids. The police station was the answer. But just because that’s a safe, warm spot doesn’t mean the police should actually get involved.

4 – If the 15-year-old was a babysitter, we’d trust him/her to take care of the 12-year-old. Why didn’t the library staff? And frankly, the 12-year-old is old enough to be a babysitter, too. So why were they both treated LIKE babies?

Sounds like a confusing situation that got out of hand. I wonder what would’ve happened if a staffer offered to drop the kids off. To me that sounds like such an easy alternative. But I’m sure it opens a whole can of worms. Or a whole can of lawyers. Whatever. — L.

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“Play me Chopin. He died before I could know him, and so he remains beautiful.”

“Almost five years [he had pined for her]! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams — not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

— Nick about Gatsby and his flame for Daisy, The Great Gatsby

The nature of emotional relationships often overlaps in confusing complications ranging from the simple crush to Freudian oddness. If this causes the writers to accidentally build things like harems, the easy way to get around this is to reveal the basal nature of a relationship. This is a form of Wishful Projection.

In the character’s mind, one type of relationship was simply confused with another. This has some basis in reality, where some potentially romantic relationships are actually people seeking “figures”. (Hell, who hasn’t done this at some point?) They spend time with a person because they remind them of someone else. For example, some characters attracted to older characters often have an absent parent or older sibling. This situation is often the inherent role of an Unwanted Harem‘s Unlucky Everydude.

In some other cases, it turns out that the character was only in love with the idea of being in love and applied it to the first suitable person they met; and in others, a character falls in love with another character… or more specifically, some defining feature of that character. For example, Bob falls in love with Alice because she is incredibly beautiful, or a brilliant fighter, or incredibly smart, but he fails to actually comprehend Alice beyond that trait. This is easy to do to The Lost Lenore since she’s not around to contradict an idealized version of her.

Doing this poorly can feel incredibly cheap if the “explanation” doesn’t make sense or potential evidence wasn’t presented beforehand, as it feels as if the writers are just going down the list of romantic opposition and checking them off.

A sub-trope of Broken Pedestal, which is often what awaits anyone on the path of this trope. Super-trope to In Love with Your Carnage, in which a character sees someone dish out brutal murders and falls for them.

Like Death of the Hypotenuse and Ron the Death Eater, this trope serves as a subtrope of Die for Our Ship in fanfic, to clear the way for the author’s preferred ship.

If a character is Really Seven Hundred Years Old, this can keep the writers from having to deal with a Mayfly–December Romance.

The trope name refers to Éowyn’s unrequited love for Aragorn from the The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy, from the line “It is but a shadow and a thought that you love. I cannot give you what you seek.”

If someone assumes a person’s personality because of what she’s wearing, such as a Sundress of Innocence making a male character assume a girl is pure and innocent, he may be engaged in this trope.

Accordingly, compare and contrast with All Love Is Unrequited. Compare The Dulcinea Effect. Not to be confused with Fighting a Shadow. Contrast Redundant Romance Attempt, acting out of character to impress a love interest who’d rather you Be Yourself.

See Post-Support Regret for the platonic version of this trope, though the two can overlap if the one who loved the shadow was an Only Friend who supported them and ignored all their wrongdoings, only to be proven wrong.

Delusions of Parental Love is another platonic variation, where a child views their parent in a very idealized light and refuses to believe that their caregiver doesn’t actually care about them.

Related to Doesn’t Know Their Lover, which is where someone doesn’t really know someone they are in a relationship well and doesn’t require someone to actually have feelings for their partner.

Most definitely can be Truth in Television.