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Edna should be arrested

Edna should be arrested

Dear Editor:
I just read the absurd letter about the missing child and the reaction of the child’s mother, Mrs. Edna Gosling.  This letter has got to be a joke.  First, unless I am totally insane myself, I would not combine my feelings about your newspaper in the same letter as describing the ordeal of a missing daughter.... and Tabatha? Tabby? As I read the letter, I was certain at the end the missing one was going to turn out to be a cat.
Oh come on — is there really a policeman with multiple ranks of Captain, Lieutenant, and Colonel?   
Mrs. Gosling should be arrested for child endangerment if she really waited two days to call the police. A responsible mother would have called the police in two seconds — and would have jumped instantly into a tuk tuk or onto the back of someone’s motorbike to chase the songtaow — and yet despite her horror, Mrs. G. was still cogent enough to comment on the amount of pollution the songtaow was belching? How civic minded!
We all have our own fears — but in my case if I were to “fear the worse” it would be that my daughter was dead — it seems odd that Mrs. G assumed immediately that her daughter had been delivered into the sex trade. 
As always, I try to identify for myself the point the writer is trying to make with their words.  Was the point to thank the Tourist Police?  Was it to encourage people to avoid beggars on the street?  Was it to praise her church ladies?  Was the purpose to editorialize about the sex trade?  Too many possible goals for one short letter to the editor.  Too much fluff combined with the seriousness of a missing child.
To me, this whole letter reads like a sick joke.  But if it is real, all the writer has done is to convince me that she is not competent to take care of a special needs teenager — and is certainly not competent to handle an emergency in a responsible way.  I feel sorry for the teenager who has both “special needs” and also has a blithering idiot for a mother.
If this letter is real, I would strongly suggest someone contact the Consulate of Mrs. Gosling’s home country.  She needs a great deal of help and should not be allowed to parent a special needs child without the support of a trained social worker.   My best hope would be that Mrs. Gosling and her daughter would be remanded to their home country immediately where each of them could get the help of an accredited social service agency.
If the letter is not real, it is one of the funniest and most creative bits of writing I have read in some time.
Name withheld by request — I certainly don’t want Mrs. Gosling contacting me.

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