I was walking in a pocket park nearby, there's a walking trail, some swings, those little horsey riding things, etc. I was the only one there walking the trail while on the phone with my bestie. A silver KIA with California personal plates (we're in Texas) pulls up, and a heavy-set white guy, mid-60s, gets out of the car and is holding the hand of a clearly Hispanic boy. They make their way across the park and sit on a bench swing. I thought it was strange he was making the little boy (about 4 or 5) sit down on a bench swing in a park and not let him run around and play. I continued walking the circular trail and watching them when I'd get near the bench swing. The little boy starts crying and inching away from the man on the bench and the man kept looking down the back of the kid's shirt, like checking on a sore or something. Then, the man was on his phone, and the little boy was on a handheld game system. Each time I would get to their section of the trail I'd try to listen to them and at one point I heard the man say, "Are you happy with that?" I assume he meant the game. It was very overcast and the man was wearing blue aviator sunglasses and had an earpiece in his left ear. At one point the man tried to lift the boy's chin to have him look at him and the boy was resisting and leaning away from him.

A young couple, in their 30s, arrive with 2 big dogs and start to walk the trail. They made one lap around that trail and were suddenly leaving, getting back into their suburban. These were big dogs, and you're gonna let them run a few yards and pack it in? That's when the man gets up and takes the hand of the little boy and they walk back toward the KIA. The man opens the hatchback and picks the boy up and puts him in the hatchback, closes it, and then gets in the drivers seat. What the hell? Who puts a kid in the hatchback? They exit the park and drive off in the same direction the couple with the dogs went. The whole time they were at the park they were seated on the bench swing. I have boys, there's no way I could have taken them to a park and made them sit down the whole time and then pitched them in the back of my hatchback and driven off. And to add a whole other weird vibe, the start of the personal plate? COMET I can't run Cali plates so I was bummed it wasn't a Texas plate. Damnit, I wish I'd gotten the Suburban plates, it just occurred to me that they were just as suss.

I don't want to be one of those who sees child trafficking under every rock, but this was WEIRD. I wouldn't even know who to tell about this. It made me on edge though and I was memorizing everything I could. The little boy had on an oversized white t-shirt that said, "It's ok to be different," and gray sweatpants. Everything the man had on was blue: blue jeans, a short-sleeved blue shirt, a blue all-weather type vest, blue aviator shades, and blue topsiders.

So either Grampa had the weirdest park outing with his grandson ("Did you have fun at the park? Yeah we sat on a bench") or something nefarious was going on. The question is have I been at this so long that I'm seeing the boogeyman around every corner? Honestly I'd rather be wrong and look stupid.