“The child already made the point clearly enough.”
The woman straightened and tried to recover.
“I’m thinking about everyone else,” she said. “Some of us care what children are exposed to.”
A father near the shoreline shook his head.
“Put your phone down.”
“My kids did not notice anything until you started shouting and pointing your phone,” he said. “You made this weird, not her.”
That was when my voice came back.
“Put your phone down,” I said. “You do not have permission to record my children.”
She hesitated.
Then I said, “No one here was uncomfortable until you decided they should be.”
Her face went bright red. She lowered the phone, muttered that the beach had changed, and walked fast toward the parking lot without apologizing.
