This was years ago, but I’m convinced that my daughter was almost kidnapped while I was sitting next to her.

This happened at the park so long ago that I can’t remember if it was fall or spring, but I remember it being one of the first nice days of the season with temperatures in the 50s (10°C). <br><br>It was a Saturday afternoon and my daughter was about three years old (3). We were at the park in a playground near the jungle gym and swings. We were sitting on those rubber horseshoe things that kids can climb on and bounce on. <br><br>My daughter was sitting on the shadowed side of this toy and I was sitting on the side facing the sun. I’m looking at the playground equipment directly in front of us, watching the other kids run around when I notice this man out of the corner of my eye walking from the parking lot. He’s wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. He had very short hair that was mostly black but had a little bit of gray in it. He looked like he was probably in his 40s or 50s. He was walking across the grass to where my daughter and I were sitting. I couldn’t tell what he was doing but he seemed to be coming our way. <br><br>As he got closer I saw that he had a plastic bag in one hand and a bottle of something in the other. He didn’t look very clean and he looked down at the ground as he was walking. I looked back over at the playground and when I looked back at this guy, he was right next to me. He sat down on the other side of my daughter, basically making her sit in between us. This red flag went off in my head but looking back on it, I think if he was really trying to abduct my daughter, he probably would’ve already done it. <br><br>He sat down next to my daughter, who was facing away from him, and he started to open the plastic bag that he had. I don’t know what he had in there, but it smelled like booze. I’m not sure what was in the bottle that he had but the smell of it was terrible. He asked me if I wanted to drink but I told him no. He offered my daughter some, and my daughter has always been very clingy, which I’m now thankful for. <br><br>My daughter kept facing away from him talking to me and looking at me out of the corner of her eye every once in a while; she did not want anything to do with this guy. I asked him if he had kids and he told me that he was a grandpa. I asked him how many grandkids he had, and he told me that he had one. <br><br>At this point, I really don’t know what to do. I’m trying to make small talk, but I’m not stupid. I know that this guy is up to something. He started telling me about his grandkids, but if he had a grandkid then why was he at the park by himself drinking? <br><br>Out of nowhere, this guy said: “I really want to kiss her right now. I wonder if she’d let me kiss her?” And without even looking at him, I stood up and grabbed my daughter and started walking away. He started yelling at me, telling me that I was being paranoid and I was overreacting. <br><br>I told my daughter that we needed to go tell a grown-up what this man said, and I asked her if she could repeat what he said to her. And my daughter, who was three years old at the time and wouldn’t talk to strangers, looked at me square in the face and said: “He said that he wanted to kiss me and he wondered if I would let him kiss me.” <br><br>I was so proud of her for remembering that, but I still get chills when I think about it. There was another mom and her daughter in the park. They were sitting on a bench not very far from where we were, and I went up to this lady and I told her what happened. But when I looked back at where this guy was sitting, he was gone. <br><br>I went back to where we were sitting and he wasn’t there. I looked at the parking lot and his car was gone. I still have no clue what this guy’s intentions were but I’m sure that he wasn’t trying to sell Girl Scout cookies. <br><br>I’ve thought about this so many times over the years, and the only thing I can think of is that maybe he was trying to abduct a little girl, but not mine specifically. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. <br><br>If that’s the case, I hope that wherever he was going he didn’t find the girl that he was looking for. I don’t want the guy to go to jail, but I really wish that he would just leave little girls alone.