ON YOUR OWN AT BLOOMIE'S

Fellow scribe Lenore Skenazy is writing a column this week about how she left her 9 year old at the perfume counter at Bloomingdale's in Manhatten to fulfill his wish to make his way home on his own like an adult. She thought this was fine, but others thought it tantamount to child abuse. So, here's what I think...

Lenore: "New York City is as safe as it was in 1963." Why 1963? Is that when Batman finally got the Joker off the streets? I mean, there's a lot of nasty supervillains roaming Gotham's dark, drippy alleys you know--The Riddler, The Penguin, George Steinbrenner. Next thing you know, your poor kid has been whisked away to be trained as a bemasked Henchman, striped-shirt cannon fodder for the Dynamic Duo. BIFF-POW-BAM, I mean, it's hard for your average Henchman to get a decent medical coverage nowadays...
But seriously folks, the issue is how are we defining "kid." Perhaps the eyebrows would not be so raised if your son were 12 or 13. So long as you're in single-digit territory, there may very well be a good reason to be concerned. Heck, some 12 year olds are bigger than I am, they're physically imposing, i.e. not going to be easily whisked away to slave away in the Yankees farm system.
Of course, you're in Manhattan. In Baltimore, leave the kid alone for five minutes, chances are he'll end up with an STD and a corruption charge against him.
Then again, you might be guilty of child endangerment just by leaving your son at the perfume counter. Without an adult to protect him, he might be spritzed beyond recognition as a swarm of Bloomie's perfume workers hit him from every side with shots of ETERNITY FOR MEN, ARAMIS and the latest concoction from Calvin Klein...