Laser pointers are NOT toys, or why too many kids per adult in a store makes me skittish: oddharmonic

Last week was a bad sinus week (pressure to the point where I was waiting for my eyes to pop out) and we were running low on groceries. Himself got off work early Saturday night, so we had time to run out to Sam's Club and Wal-Mart on Sunday afternoon.

In Goldsboro, Wal-Mart is a hopping place on weekends and it's pretty crowded compared to the off hours in which we usually go out for groceries. I did my best to ignore the density (I do _not_ like crowds) as we wound up behind a slow-moving woman wrangling a cart and four kids as we headed toward housewares.

Two of the kids were being awfully quiet for being about 5-6 years old. It didn't set off any flags in my head -- they were dressed as if they'd come from church, so maybe they were just well behaved? -- until one of them spun around with something in his hand and BAM! I couldn't see.

Turns out the woman gave the kids laser pointers to play with. It doesn't strike me as a particularly bright thing to do as a general principle, but DO NOT GIVE LASER POINTERS TO YOUR CHILDREN TO PLAY WITH IN A BUSY STORE!

I think this counts as another reason why I think people should have to meet licensing standards to have children. Incidentally, most schools consider laser pointers to be contraband.

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Laser pointers are NOT toys, or why too many kids per adult in a store makes me skittish