A Danish mother visiting Manhattan left her baby in a carriage outside a barbecue restaurant while she was eating with her husband on Tuesday evening. Alarmed New Yorkers called the police and the mother, Annette Sorensen, was arrested for neglect.
I’ve had some good barbecue in my life, but I can personally vouch that there isn’t any barbecue in New York worth getting sent up the river to cooler., the big house, or the pig pen.
Apparently, it’s normal to leave your baby curbside in Copenhagen, the home of Ms. Sorensen. “We’d rather they take their nap enjoying the fresh air,” the editor of Denmark’s largest newspaper told reporters at The New York Times. Shortly after the arrest, the Danish Consulate had hired a high-powered attorney for the couple, the story was on the front pages of two newspapers, and all of Scandinavia was in an uproar.
Nina Bergstrom, editor of a Swedish paper, said, “I guess you Americans can have your baby kidnapped or snapped away if you leave it on the street.”
Duh. Ever heard of the Lindbergs?
So the baby was returned to its mother and the whole experience was excused due to “cultural differences,” and suddenly we sensitive Americans are feeling kinda apologetic.
What? A tot on the street? Aw shucks, we didn’t know it was okay to park junior by the fire hydrant while you swig down a few margaritas in a nice warm restaurant. Had we understood that everybody leaves their tikes out in the cold in Copenhagen, we might have stuck our kids out there too!
If you want my opinion, and I assume you do since you’ve read this far, I think that Danish mama was left out in the snow too often as a child.
Of course I understand cultural differences. New York can be a strange place to foreign visitors like me and Ms. Sorensen. Some cultural differences you can ignore–for instance, I don’t go to ice hockey games or say “youzguyz” when I mean “y’all.” But to ignore other cultural differences would be unhealthy. You wouldn’t want to, say, put a penny on the subway tracks, expect an oncoming cab driver to slow down for any reason, or jog through Central Park at midnight.
Observing cultural differences isn’t like trying to read a French menu. It’s easy, really. I quickly learned here in Manhattan what a knish is. I figured out that CATS is a New York phenomenon that only people from Kansas seem to enjoy. More importantly, I learned that if you want to keep anything you deem valuable, you need to have it really, really close. Which probably account for why dollar bills always seem to smell like a shoe here in Manhattan.
And then there are those cultural things that you and I share with many New Yorkers. Most of us eat hamburgers from time to time. Most of us were born on this planet. And I doubt a New Yorker visiting Alabama would park the perambulator outside a Stucky’s on I-65. Here in Manhattan, most of us wouldn’t leave an umbrella on the street, much less a baby. And don’t give me all this bunk about Copenhagenians being less inclined to snatch babies than Americans. Maybe our babies are more snatchable, considering their brains seem to work better, having been protected from the elements. Maybe our criminals are more caring and feel sorry for babies left alone.
Babies are vulnerable, defenseless, and need constant supervision. Even a kangaroo knows that. But if you want to go to out and leave your child behind, we innovative Americans have come up with a system for that:
It’s called a baby-sitter.
I’m with Shakespeare, Andalusia, something is still rotten in the state of Denmark.
—Morgan Murphy