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screams started coming out the door of the changing room. I could see the dad's anxious look outside as he tried to peer into the doorway to see what was going on. The tirade stopped for a moment while the boy came flying out of the room like he had been thrown out the door. Dad was waiting outside. Now it was his turn to berate thea child, yelling at him while the whole park looked on. The wife came out and the two ganged up on the boy until they suddenly realized that with all the commotion with their son they had lost track of grandma. The woman blurted out "If she's gone it's your fault," to the boy and the whole family began frantically looking around and calling her.

The park was closing. As I walk out the gate I could see that the old lady was standing outside nodding her head and smiling, talking to a few young black teenagers. The couple spotted her around the same time as me and made a beeline for her. As the younger woman violently shook the woman who gave her life, she yelled at her and glared over at the kids. "Did you give them any money?" she screamed. Then she shrieked at the teenagers "She's got dementia. What the hell are you trying to pull, anyway?" The teens just glared back at the daughter while the elder woman protested, "No we were just talking about..." But her daughter would not allow her to finish. Instead, she practically dragged her mom to the car by her thin, crepey arm until I started worrying whether it might break.

For a moment, I considered reporting her. Then I thought, here I am in this town in the middle of nowhere. I do not know where I am, never mind who to call. I started thinking about what it must be like to be these kids growing up in such a constant state of crisis. Then I thought of myself at my worst moments. I imagined what it must be like to be this woman. I wondered if she grew up abused by this very same woman that she now abuses. Or maybe she was just having a temporary loss of her sanity because of the stress of taking care of two kids, a spineless husband, and a mom with dementia. Or maybe she was just a racist, abusive asshole who I should have sent to jail.

I believe it is by observing others that we make sense of our own lives. I can look with envy on the young couple so in love with their freedom and their whole future ahead of them. I can look with pity on the old woman who cannot even escape her abusive family for five minutes and chat with some younger kids who are enjoying her stories about when she was young. Or I can look at my own life and be thankful for the memories of my own first dates and for the loving parents that I had growing up. It is all in a day's people watching.

Learn more about this author, Rachel Doherty.
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