We drove by a very interesting scene yesterday.

We live in a small town.  Most people know each other.  Not too much ‘big city stuff’ happens here.  Until yesterday.  We were driving and the traffic started to slow down.  I thought it was either a school bus or a tractor.  It was neither.

It was three police officers pinning a man down on the hood of his car.  The police were struggling to hold this man down.  It looked like the officers were succeeding but not without great effort.  A fourth police car was just coming to the scene.

Zion’s eyes were huge.  He watched with great interest.  We kept driving as to not be voyeurs but nevertheless the kids were affected.   Especially Zion.  He is 6.

We drove away.  Zion was still affected.  He asked many questions, one of them being,

“what do you think that man did to get in trouble with the police?”

Now I could go a number of ways with this.  Should I tell him that some people make wrong choices and that even though that happens, people are still loved?

Should I tell him that this guy probably stole something or did something that was against the law?

I wasn’t quite sure.

But I was pleased that he was so affected by it.  It was clear that he still sees injust moments as not normal.  Even after he has suffered a seemingly injust thing by losing his Mom.  I liked it that he didn’t think that this was right.

But I still didn’t know what to say to him.

So when he asked what the man did to get in trouble, I did what a good, loving, caring dad would say.

“Zion”, I said, “the man is being pinned down on his hood by the police because he didn’t eat his vegetables”.

MdH