Forgotten child
ish I could claim immunity after leaving a 5-year-old child behind for hours on the school bus I was employed to operate for a school district.
Our reporter Tracy Neal explained what happened after the boy’s parents filed suit against several district officials, including the Bentonville School district and its transportation director, members of the school board, the district superintendent and a Jane Doe.
From what I read, the upset parents had cause to seek legal recourse.
However, the defendants’ response to the suit said they were insured and immune from lawsuits and liability.
Neal writes the district also denied many of the allegations, and said the case should be dismissed.
In a nutshell: Charles Carpenter, a kindergartner at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, got on the bus on Sept. 19 just after 6 a.m. Michael Carpenter watched as his son was greeted by a substitute female driver who checked his name off the regular passenger list, according to the complaint.
Michella Carpenter received a call almost five hours later informing her that Charles hadn’t gotten off the bus and had been found at the transportation yard.
Charles was dehydrated, sweaty and had urinated on himself by the time he was discovered, his mother said at the board’s Sept. 20 meeting.
He was taken to the emergency room later where there were indications of dehydration in his bloodwork and bubbles in his urine, according to the complaint. He also has been affected psychologically and now refuses to ride the school bus.
The parents’ suit claims the driver failed to follow policy and search the bus for children before leaving. They seek unspecified monetary damages.
The defendants argue the family is entitled to nothing, should have to pay legal expenses, and the judge should deny the Capenters’ request for damages.
Were I Circuit Judge Doug Scrantz, I would have a very difficult time determining if the school district and its driver get a pass based on the immunity claim or recognize the facts that the child was indeed abandoned for hours and suffered as a direct result.
Wouldn’t it be dandy if we could all pass through life citing immunity?
Nostalgic drives
I was driving a peaceful Ozarks highway the other afternoon when I remembered my childhood when the family routinely took two- or threehour Sunday afternoon drives with no particular destination in mind.
The change of seasons, whether the lime-green blooming of spring or the reds, yellows and oranges of fall, motivated these family outings.
I have to believe these experiences had to be something many baby boomer kids enjoyed with parents.
Mom would have already packed a lunch in the picnic basket and we’d take along a couple of blankets for times we didn’t find a roadside picnic table.
I recall several afternoons when we pulled from the road into a park and dropped the tailgate on the station wagon to use as a makeshift table. Those were definitely memorable events for me and my two younger siblings.
I don’t see or hear of such family activities anymore, not since favorite teams play on Sunday afternoon, movies are so available on cable and streaming channels and video games have become popular.
The only diversions we had back in the day were conversations with each other and finding box turtles. Riding in the back seat for two hours today just can’t compete.
Alas, Sunday afternoon drives are forever in America’s rear-view mirror.
Our credit scores
Mississippi yet again has kept us out of the cellar, this time when it comes to comparing credit scores of the U.S. population.
Using the VantageScore model, the personal finance website WalletHub analyzed the average credit scores of residents in 50 states and found the average score is 695, just beneath the line (700) considered to be where a good credit range begins.
Arkansas ranked 47th with an average score of 673, followed by Alabama at 672, Louisiana at 668 and Mississippi at 662.
Yeah, I know, nothing to brag about, but at least we aren’t scraping rock-bottom.
Stoned on hemp
German researchers have been feeding cattle hemp containing THC, the active ingredient in marijuana and CBD products, in an experiment that showed they then produced milk with THC.
Hemp has yet to be approved for animal feed in the U.S. or Europe. If ever approved, I’d expect milk sales to soar in every college town across America. A suggested marketing slogan: Enjoy High Times With Dairy Delight.
THC-chomping cows supposedly wobbled on their hooves, rolled their tongues and licked their noses, yawned and their eyes reddened. Their appetite and milk production also decreased.
There were no munchies or music, although an unconfirmed report said it appeared one hemp-chewing Holstein was laughing hysterically while staring at a candle for no apparent reason (OK, I made that part up).