Playing out an elaborate charade of concern for a child who was obviously in no danger, police arrested a mom who let her son wait in the car while she ran into a Chicagoland Whole Foods for less than five minutes.

Then, for reasons known only to those who write and follow protocols that bear as much relationship to reality as your average Adam Sandler movie, paramedics came and examined the boy, who was just dandy (impossible!).

Of course, if we all expired after five minutes in a non-moving vehicle, we'd be dead in our first traffic jam, wouldn't we? If waiting in a car is so debilitating, what about those of us who pull up to a friend's house and have to wait while said "friend" finishes "just one" email. Ten, fifteen minutes later, we're still alive.

Fuming, but alive. Nonetheless, according to the Southtown Star:

A Chicago woman is facing a charge of endangering her child's life after leaving him inside her car while she shopped at Whole Foods. Police said witnesses saw 35-year-old Ilona Lukaszczyk leave her young son in his car seat while she went inside the store at 15260 S. LaGrange Road, in Orland Park, on Aug. 20. The temperature was 75 degrees and sunny and the windows of the car were rolled up, save the driver's side window which was down about 3 inches, according to police. The witnesses stayed with the car until police arrived in time to greet Lukaszczyk when she emerged from the store less than five minutes after going inside.

The hussy had some lame excuse: her son was sick and she was late to his doctor's appointment. Better she had unbuckled his seat and dragged the sick child through a busy parking lot, exposed everyone at Whole Foods to his virus, then dragged him back through that SUV-choked lot and re-buckled the now screaming, sweaty tyke. Because you're only a good parent if you seriously inconvenience yourself for no other reason than to prove you care.

That seems to be the only way to satisfy the authorities.

And so another mom must try to convince a prosecutor that there is a difference between letting a kid wait in the car for five minutes and leaving the kid to bake in the car for five hours—a difference our law enforcers steadfastly refuse to acknowledge. Their inability to distinguish between daily life and looming danger makes no one safer.