Thanks to Netflix and insomnia, I've been watching enough true crime documentaries lately that I've developed a bit of an obsession with alibis.
As I'm sure you already know, an alibi is a timeline surrounding an alleged commission of a crime that would put a suspect someplace other than where the crime was committed. If a suspect can provide that, and has at least one witness or a documented record to back up their story, they're off the hook.
Most people, unless they live/work alone in the wilderness, or unless they did what they are being accused of, usually have no problem coming up with alibis. But that got me to thinking, what about parents of young children?
Call me paranoid if you want, but if you think about it, typical, beleagured parents of young children without regular childcare, can go an entire day without seeing or talking to another soul, other than their children. And frankly, kids don't make good alibis.
Take me for example. I'm alone with my kids all day at least once a week, sometimes for an entire weekend. If, by some unholy sequence of events, I ever became a person of interest in a crime investigation, on those days, I'd have a hard time coming up with a record proving I wasn't where a crime was being committed, nor would I have anyone to corroborate my timeline of where I said I was. My 1 year-old, while effective at nonverbal communication when she wants a graham cracker on a shelf out of her reach, would be useless to me. Screaming and pointing only works to get what SHE wants, not the scapegoat her Mama would need.
My 5-year-old would also be useless. Right now he's busy mastering the days of the week, learning to tell time, and ticking down how many days a week he has to go to kindergarten before he gets a two day break. If you ask him what he did today and in what order, he can't remember. And what he can remember is usually wrong, overstated, or out of order. I'm not gonna be able to count on him to lay out what time of day Mama cut his chicken into bite-size pieces for him only to eat one of those pieces, then throw the rest away. And how's he going to convince a jury of my peers that I fall asleep on the couch five minutes after I put him and his sister down for the night when Daddy is away? Who will buy my story that I spent the day cleaning up after my kids? That won't hold water if anybody takes a look at the place at the end of the day and it looks like a cyclone hit it. Again. Who will believe me that it's impossible to leave the house with mayhem in mind when you spend half the day making people take naps and the other half of it handing them things they can't reach and breaking up their fights.
There'd be no documented record of my whereabouts, because I can't talk on phone without one of them teying to gargle bleach or pushing the other one off of something high. I can't have anybody over, either. My 5-year-old would interrupt every conversation to get attention, and the baby, currently in her stranger danger phase, would cry and beg to be picked up anytime someone who wasn't related to her looked at her longer than 5 seconds.
This tells me very clearly that I am not suited for a life of crime. And if you, too, have young children, hear me say this: neither are you. There you go, mamas and daddies. I just saved you thousands in lawyer fees and a lengthy prison sentence.
Stay out of trouble. Good night.
