Incompetent Fools

The child ambled around the zoo, humming along to a tune and kicking rocks into the enclosures. He was 4 years old and smeared with filth. Was this a homeless child, an abused child, or an escapee from the local orphanage? No, actually he was a normal child – it was his parents who were not very smart. His young parents thought it would be fine to let him out. It was just a zoo after all, no kidnappers here. However, a park security guard was watching him like a hawk. He was ready to take the boy and find his parents. It was just when he kicked a stone into the hippo pen that the security guard decided he had had enough.

The security guard took his truck, slapped on his handy “free candy” sign and drove up to the boy. He drove up and said “Free candy!” The boy, uneducated about strangers, was ready to hop in, but then he saw out of the corner of his eye that his naïve mother was watching, looking through a pair of binoculars, and that his father was observing, too, from way up in the branches of a maple tree.

“Oh look, they are giving free candy to our boy!” the mom announced to the father above. The boy decided to go into the candy truck because he thought it was organized by his parents, and that they were seeing if he would go in. The man took the boy by the hand and led him into the van. 

Inside the van, the security guard set the boy down on a chair. The boy asked, “Where is the candy?” The security guard gave him a confused look as he drove away from the zoo. All of a sudden, the boy started crying because he wanted his parents. Luckily for him, his parents were running for the van. Unfortunately, the security officer saw this as a kidnapping attempt on the boy, and drove faster. The boy started to bawl. 

The guard turned around and said, “C’mon quit crying, there’s nothing to cry about.”

“That was Mommy and Daddy!”

“They don’t look it.” The boy cried harder. The tears created trails across his face, streaking the dirt and dust that had collected there. The guard decided to go to the police station to try and find the kid’s parents and interrogate them.

 “Those were my parents!” 

“Where?” 

“At the zoo!”

The guard pulled up to the police station right when they were receiving the call from the boy’s mom and dad that a man had kidnapped their child. A detective looked out the window and saw the exact description of the van and the man that the parents were giving him. He said, “Alright ma’am, we got it.”

The squad at the aging police base made it outside onto the square parking lot right when the zoo security guard got out of his “free candy” van. The boy ran back to his parents who were crying as he was.

“Don’t do that ever again,” his mom muttered in his ear, even though he had not done anything.

“Why are you putting cuffs on me?” the zoo guard angrily inquired, oblivious to his crime. The policemen hauled the cursing man into a cell while the shaken parents took the boy home. 

The man was charged for kidnapping and was fired from his job, and the boy’s parents stayed in denial, grounding the boy for life because of their mistakes. After this ordeal, he became very paranoid. In fact, when he was twelve, he put up a sign that said: “If you see a strange man, run, and if you see a strange woman, run as well.”