That Time I Sent My 12-Year-Old Into The Gas Station Alone And Overthought The Whole Thing
It was 92 degrees last Saturday, coming home from Javi’s little league game, and my 2008 Civic’s AC has been broken since May. Javi chugged his whole Gatorade before we even hit the interstate, and was complaining so loud my ears hurt. I pulled off at the exit that has that gas station with the half-broken OPEN sign, the one where the cashier keeps a fat bulldog named Killer asleep on a dog bed by the counter—he calls him Killer, which is funny because Killer never moves, just ignores everyone—and sells warm boiled peanuts out of a crockpot by the door. I’d just finished pumping gas, my sneakers were caked in muddy grass from standing on the damp sidelines, and I really didn’t want to track dirt inside. So when Javi begged to go in alone, I said okay before I even thought about it.
Gave him a crumpled five dollars from my cup holder, told him to get whatever he wanted, and he took off before I could change my mind. I leaned back against the driver’s seat, and that’s when the panic started creeping in. I don’t even know where it came from, at first. I’d seen that reel three days before, the one of a mom who got chewed out online for letting her 11-year-old walk to the park a block from her house alone, all the comments saying she was reckless, how could she leave a kid unprotected, anything could happen. That stuff sticks with you, even when you know it’s just internet yelling.
I sat there watching the door, wiping sweat off my neck, counting the seconds. A guy in a faded John Deere hat went in ahead of him, and I started staring, like I was gonna memorize his face just in case something went wrong. Then two minutes turned into five, and Javi still wasn’t out. A cop car pulled into the spot next to me, and my stomach dropped all of a sudden. I didn’t even have a real reason for it, I just thought, what if someone called the cops on a lone kid? What if Javi accidentally grabbed the gummy worms and forgot to pay for them, and they’re in there questioning him right now? I sat up straight, hand on the door handle, ready to go barreling in to fix whatever I’d broken by letting him go alone. My muddy shoe stuck to the gross sticky floor mat when I shifted my foot, and I had to yank it free, which made me even more jittery.
Just then the door swung open, and Javi came out, arms all full, a bag of sour gummy worms sticking out of his hoodie pocket. He waved at the cop who was walking in, the cop nodded and smiled, and that was that. Javi climbed into the passenger seat, dumped everything on the center console: my iced tea, just how I like it, extra ice, his blue Gatorade, the pack of mint gum I’d mentioned needing that morning that I forgot to pick up at the grocery store a week before. “The cashier gave me a free boiled peanut,” he said, pulling a crumpled napkin with the warm peanut out of his pocket. “I dropped the first one on the way to the counter, so he gave me another. Why were you staring at me through the window the whole time? That’s weird.”
I laughed it off, but I was thinking about when I was 12. I used to ride my bike three miles to the public pool by myself every summer, stop at the corner market on the way home for a cherry popsicle. No one waited for me outside in the car. My mom didn’t even get a check-in text, because text messages didn’t exist. No one thought that was neglect. That was just being a kid. When did we start treating every small solo trip like a game of Russian roulette?
I’m not saying there’s nothing to worry about. Bad things happen, I know that. But I also got mad at Javi three weeks ago when we went through a McDonald’s drive-thru and I made him order his own Happy Meal and he froze up. He wouldn’t talk into the speaker, just hid behind the seat, and I was annoyed afterwards, going on about how he’s gotta learn how to do basic stuff by himself sometime. When is that gonna happen if I never let him do anything alone? That’s the stupid contradiction of it, right? You want them to grow up to be confident and capable, but the second you get a chance to let them practice, you panic.
I still caught myself side-eyeing a mom at the grocery store last week when she let her 10-year-old daughter go to the bathroom alone by the entrance. I caught myself doing it, and I felt so guilty. Like, what am I doing? What do I think is gonna happen? It’s a grocery store in the suburbs, in broad daylight. I was that 10-year-old once, went to the bathroom alone all the time.
People will argue about this stuff forever, I think. Some people will say you’re a bad parent if you let a 12-year-old go in alone, some people will say you’re a helicopter parent if you don’t. I don’t have the answer. I know I’ll do it again next time, probably. Javi’s already asked when he can go in alone to get snacks for the road trip next month. But I also know I’ll still sit in the car, watching the door, counting the seconds, probably working myself up over nothing the whole time. That’s just how it is now. We’re all just fumbling around, trying to strike that balance between keeping them safe and letting them become people who can go buy their own Gatorade when they’re thirsty. No perfect answer, no neat ending. Just a kid with a cold drink and a free boiled peanut, and a mom who overthought five minutes in a gas station parking lot.
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