Pittsburgh mom gambles on locking kid in car

(718 words)

Pittsburgh is in the midst of one of those hysterical episodes that seem cosmically bestowed just to give rant-worthy material to indignant talk show hosts. 

A 30-year-old area woman is facing negligence charges for locking her 9-year-old son in the car while she went inside a local casino to claim a $10 gambling voucher.

I know, I know. On its face, it looks terrible. And, truly, Valerie E. Snyder made a terrible mistake.

She should never have locked her son in the car.

She should have locked him in the trunk where no one would have seen him.

Let’s break this one down.

First of all, this happened at 10 p.m. on the sixth floor of the Rivers Casino parking garage right near PNC Park where she had taken the boy to a Pirate game.

The latter warms my heart. My mommy never took me to a Pirate game. Or a casino, for that matter. So for about eight hours prior to being branded a negligent mother, she was being an absolutely wonderful mother, one any son would adore.

And while they’re there singing “Take Me Out To the Ballgame!” and trying to snag a foul ball and snacking on — talk about criminal acts — $5 bags of peanuts, the promoters of Rivers Casino arrange to give her a $10 voucher for free gambling.

I don’t know the particulars of the giveaway, but it’s not risky to infer they gave them to all 35,000 people in attendance. But let’s say they gave them to just 2,500 or so who bought programs.

That’s a $25,000 promotion, a lot of scratch for any business.

Well, any business besides a casino.

They give away $10 vouchers — redeemable for only 24 hours — because they know most of the people who use a $10 gambling voucher will wind up spending at least five times that amount.

Now, I don’t know the Snyder family situation. I saw the tearful husband on TV and if he has a well-paying job then he has an eccentric affinity for dressing like a man who does not.

The Snyders live about 45 minutes from the casino and returning the next day would likely require her to pay for a sitter and again for parking.

Here’s where I put myself in her shoes.

She could either prepare herself for a next day hassle or she could dash in the casino, redeem the voucher and then one day come back and — cross your fingers — play a hand that will forever change the fortunes of the Snyder family.

So she did what casinos everywhere urge her to do.

She took a chance and crapped out; a passerby saw the boy and alerted security.

Me, I see extenuating circumstances that help me sail through jury selection without any defense challenges.

This wasn’t some 18-month-old kid strapped into a car seat in sun-baked parking lot. It was evening and 65 degrees.

And the kid was 9. That’s an age when many of today’s children start to smoke, dabble in porn and begin exhibiting the kind of behaviors that ensure the casinos will never go broke.

My favorite part of the story is the sanctimonious statement the casino issued: “We can’t stop parents from making bad decisions; but we are vigilant in our efforts to prevent this from happening . . . This individual will receive a lifetime ban from our casino. We take this issue very seriously.”

Of course, they don’t mean that. They want all of us to gamble away our every last cent then mortgage our homes in the hopes our luck might turn.

Me, I’m not going to judge Mrs. Snyder.

But I do have some salient advice for the casino operators. I do this because I understand the pivotal role gambling revenues play in funding the for-profit arenas legislators are bribed into erecting because they’re too stupid and lazy to discern responsible ways to govern.

Rivers needs to open the Valerie E. Snyder Casino Daycare Center!

Parents would be allowed to drop off their kids at the free daycare center and spend the day draining their paychecks into games of chance.

You could probably get Nike to co-sponsor it.

A Nike outlet in a casino daycare center would be a perfect place for whenever baby needs a new pair of shoes.

Related . . .

Extreme Vegas  . . . and me!

Daddy home alone

Posses, verdicts and vengeance

Pun-free egg disposal suggestions

I can’t help but think there’s got to be a game show out there that could use 550 million spoiled eggs.

I’d watch.

Rather than grouse over yet another national catastrophe -- yawn -- and symbol of our steady decline, I see a sunny side of the need to dispose of all these rotten eggs (in an effort to make this egg-pun free, I’ll pass on the sunny side up gimme).

First, we should all be grateful this didn’t happen around Easter. And for a moment, let’s wonder why we have an Easter Bunny instead of an Easter Chicken.

It would take some getting used to, but a visit by the egg-bearing Easter Chicken makes more sense.

But what do you do with all these eggs? Bury them? Are they hazardous?

As the guy who’d always stop for eggs prior to every Devil’s Night escapade, I sense opportunity.

There’s just something about the egg, that shape, so easy to toss. Anything it hits, so sure to slime. In the hands of veteran vandals, the egg is a handy goo grenade.

You’d think the producers of “Wipe Out,” the ABC dimwit gloopfest, would grasp the possibilities. I like the show format which involves pulverizing imbeciles, but the idiot host banter makes it unwatchable with the volume up.

It’s just one more reason to look forward to September 15 and the return of “Survivor” host Jeff Probst, the Robert DeNiro of reality show hosts before Robert DeNiro started making too many Ben Stiller movies.

I think these rotten eggs could be used to bind us in ways more patriotic than the kind of binding that occurs after excessive cheese consumption.

I envision communities hosting enormous egg-stacking competitions, egg juggling, long-distance egg tosses. I see enormous egg pyramids being crushed by determined steamrollers.

How about a pay-per-view between warring Republicans and Democrats squaring off in some kind of reenactment of the battle of Gettysburg fought with eggs?

Yesterday may have been the first day in bar history the conversation was dominated by chickens and eggs. Present were three teachers intent on getting soused before being summoned back to educate our community morons.

They were just three stools down from a guy who’d just won $100 at Pittsburgh’s Rivers Casino playing that old county fair standby, the Tic Tac Toe-playing chicken.

When the news about all the bad eggs came on, the teachers immediately talked about the bad eggs they’d soon be charged with teaching things like math. They had a lively discussion of how to rid the world of the bad eggs that make them all sick.

Then the casino patron piped up about his game victory over the chicken.

“The chicken went first and -- get this -- he didn’t take the center spot,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. So now I got two ways to win . . .”

Had anyone entered the bar in the next five minutes, it would have been understandable if they’d mistakenly thought they were hearing a man recall the time he bested Henry Kissinger at chess. He was very proud of outsmarting that chicken.

The news showed that many of the salmonella eggs came in big cartons of 36 eggs. My buddy wondered who, besides commercial establishments, would ever need so many potentially poisonous eggs.

We concluded only Kate Gosselin and that Duggar family and even the morose teachers’ moods brightened.

Me, I get to enjoy that smug feeling that comes from knowing our eco-sensitivities mean this is one chicken recall I can duck.

We purchase organic eggs from a woman known around the area as The Egg Lady and the superheroic connotation for at least today applies.

She delivers us a dozen delicious eggs for just $1.75 every week or so. How she does it for so little, I do not know.

I do know she’s proud of her chickens and her humane operation. She treats the free range animals with the same dignity and care with which I’d hope I’d be treated if someone oversaw me laying between 250-275 eggs a year, as the average hen does.

Her chickens are so refined that I’ve often thought of visiting these yard birds for a little conversation or perhaps some tea.

But no undignified games of chance. I’d be afraid I’d lose.

When it comes to matching wits with fowl, I’m the chicken.