A pregnant mother of three needs to sell her stroller to feed her three children after she was abandoned by her husband.
Anne Sargent sat on her kitchen floor and cried. It was past midnight, and it was the only time she could allow herself to show her pain — when her three children were asleep upstairs.
Anne felt the baby move and placed a tender hand on her belly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to her unborn child. “I’m doing my best, but it’s just not good enough…”
Just two months ago, Anne had been a radially happy wife and mother, confidently expecting the birth of her fourth child, and confident in her place in the world and her husband’s love. That woman was gone.
Derek had come home one night and told her he was leaving, just like that. “But why?” asked Anne. “I don’t understand, I thought we were happy!”
“YOU were happy!” Derek cried. “YOU, not me! All you did was have babies and fuss over them, now there’s one more on the way!”
“But you WANTED children!” Anne protested. “You were happy every time I was pregnant…”
A family is built on understanding and mutual respect.
“Happy?” screamed Derek. “Happy that you gave all your love and attention to the kids? All I was to you was a paycheck! Well, that’s OVER!”
So three months after Anne announced her fourth pregnancy, Derek was gone. Anne immediately went out and found herself a part-time job at a local grocery store.
The owner would have been willing to give her a full-time job, but for that, Anne would have needed to pay a sitter for her three boys and that would have consumed most of her salary, so she carefully stretched her salary. But even with the child support check Derek sent, it just wasn’t enough.
Anne started selling some antique china she’d inherited from her grandmother and that paid for the utilities for a few months. Then she sold a silver brush-and-mirror set she’d had since she was a little girl, and that paid for groceries. Little by little, as her belly grew, Anne sold her treasures to keep her family safe and fed.
Then one day, there was nothing left to sell except bric-a-brac. Anything of greater value was gone. Anne looked at the old stroller she’d brought up from the cellar.
It had been hers when she was a baby and had been used by each of her children in turn. It was very old, probably from the sixties, but it was in mint condition.
She ran her hand over the roses painted on the side and bit back her tears. She needed it for the new baby, but she needed the money even more.
She thought about getting a good price for it down at the flea market. Vintage items were always popular… And so she took the stroller to the flea market, and one of the dealers gave her $50 for it. Not much at all, but every cent helped.
Anne walked away, sure she’d never see the stroller again, but she was wrong. Two days later, she opened the front door and saw the stroller on the porch!
There was an envelope inside and Anne opened it and read: “Please call me.” The message was followed by a phone number. Anne called the number ad a woman answered her.
“Hello?” Anne said. “Are you the person who left the stroller? How did you know who it belonged to and where I live?”
“Derek told me,” the woman on the other side said. “I’m Grace Robbs. I think we should meet.”
An hour later, Grace was sitting on Anne’s sofa sipping tea. She was a pretty woman, six or seven years younger than Anne, and she looked very unhappy. Her pale skin was blotched and her eyes were swollen as if she’d been crying.
“How do you know Derek,” Anne asked, even though in her heart she already knew the answer.
“I was his girlfriend,” Grace said.
“Was?” asked Anne. “You broke up?”
“Today, as a matter of fact,” Grace said and started crying. “I didn’t know…I didn’t know about you or the children, or the baby… I found out I was pregnant, and I didn’t know how to tell him…”
“So I went to the flea market with a friend and saw this darling stroller and I bought it. I put it in the middle of the lounge and tied balloons to it with a message: ‘Hello Dad!’”
“But he wasn’t happy like I thought he’d be. He started screaming and asking where II got the stroller and if his stupid wife had given it to me. He asked if it was a joke.”
“He told me to take it right back, that he didn’t want to know about your baby. So I told him: ‘It’s for OUR baby.’ and that’s when he went crazy.”
“He accused me of wanting to trap him and said he already had three brats with you and one more on the way, and he didn’t want my baby. He told me to get out and come to you.”
“He said: ‘Might as well have all the breeding cows under the same roof.’ I’m so sorry, I didn’t know about you, I guess I didn’t know him at all!”
Anne got up and put her arm around the crying girl. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, you’ll see.”
“He’s kicked me out,” Grace said quietly. “I have no family here and nowhere to go. I have a job, but with the rents in this city, I can’t afford to live alone, and who is going to want a pregnant roommate?”
“I will!” Anne said firmly. “I need a tenant because what I earn isn’t enough, and I can’t work full-time because I can’t afford a babysitter for after school.”
“But…” Grace’s face lit up. “I work online! I can take care of the kids after school. I love kids!”
“So I can take a full-time job?” asked Anne, delighted. “The owner of the grocery store wants me to manage it for him. With your help, I can! And you don’t have to worry about stuff for the baby. After three kids I have enough for an army.”
Grace smiled through her tears. “And we have the stroller too…” she pointed out. “Are you sure? It’s Derek’s baby…”
“No,” Anne shook her head. “It’s YOUR baby, and my children’s sibling, that is all that matters.”
The two women settled into a new life together, and when Anne’s baby was born, Grace was there. When it was Grace’s turn four months later, Anne held her hand. They became a real family and raised their five children together.
As for Derek, he had several failed relationships and eventually came knocking on Anne’s door. He was shocked when he saw Grace there and asked to speak to Anne. “What do you want, Derek?” Anne asked.
“I miss you, babe…” Derek said.
Anne stared at him for a long moment then said, “Sorry, so not interested!” And she closed the door in his face.
What can we learn from this story?
If we work together, we can overcome any problem. Anne and Grace couldn’t survive alone, but together they were an unbeatable team.
A family is built on understanding and mutual respect. Anne and Grace forged a family out of their friendship and mutual support.
Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.
Florida man arrested for vulgar sticker on truck
A Florida man was arrested for displaying an obscene bumper sticker on the back of his truck, one that either expressed his sexual preferences, or his love for a four-legged animal.
After Dillon Shane Webb was told the sticker was “derogatory,” he claimed his freedom of expression was violated, and the deputy’s office asked if he was using his free speech to express his desire of “eating a donkey.”
Keep reading to learn why Webb was arrested over a bumper sticker!
In 2019, a Columbia County sheriff’s deputy was driving behind a pickup truck when he noticed a vulgar sticker plastered on the middle of the rear window.
Dashcam footage shows Deputy Travis English stopping his cruiser in a parking lot behind the brown pickup, operated by Dillon Shane Webb, 23, with the bumper sticker in clear view.
The letters on the sticker – printed in bold white – reads, “I EAT A**.”
In the video, the deputy approaches the passenger side of the truck and after saying, “hello gentleman,” he explains that he pulled the car over due to “the derogatory sticker” displayed on the back of his truck.
In Florida, law prohibits “any sticker, decal emblem or other device attached to a motor vehicle containing obscene descriptions, photographs or depictions.”
“How’s it derogatory?” Webb asks from inside the car.
The officer replies, “How’s it not derogatory?”
“Some 10-year-old kid sitting in the passenger seat of his momma’s vehicle looks over and sees ‘I eat a**’ and asks his mom what it means,” English says. “How is she going to explain that?”
Sniping back, the driver provides the wrong answer: “That’s the parent’s job, not my job,” Webb says before he’s asked to present his driver’s license and registration.
After stepping out of the vehicle, Webb is searched, and the deputy tells him the sticker is a “misdemeanor violation of Florida’s obscene materials law.”
“I have four kids…if my 6-year-old was to look at me and like, ‘dad what does I eat a** mean?…he’s curious…and the way [you] handled this situation, I’m not pleased with,” English said before offering Webb the opportunity to explain his sticker to the court system.
Next, the deputy suggests Webb remove one of the letters from the word “A**” to read “AS.” But Webb refused, citing his constitutional right to free speech.
A few minutes later, things take a nasty turn for Webb.
After confirming with his supervisor that he had reasonable rights within the law, English steps out of his cruiser and approaches Webb, who’s leaning against his car, looking at his cellphone.
“All right Mr. Webb. Place your hands behind your back,” Webb is told. When he asks “why?” he learns “because you’re going to jail.”
Asking “for what?” English explains that he was given “the option to take that off” the window, but he “refused.”
He was then arrested and charged with the additional offense of “resisting an officer without violence.”
‘Perverted mind’
“They’re just words,” Webb later told First Coast News. “If that’s how they feel, if they have a perverted mind, that’s on them.”
But according to Sergeant Murray Smith of the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, it wasn’t just the words on the sticker that Deputy English determined was illegal.
“It was the obscene phrase depicting what the deputy thought was a sexual act, which is obscene by definition,” said Smith. “What would a reasonable citizen think? Is the guy eating a donkey or is he doing a sexual act?”
The incident captured the attention of a lot of social media users, the majority who defended Webb.
“So what if he eats donkey. What’s the big deal?” asks one netizen. Another, referring to English speaking of his child’s potential reaction to the sticker, says, “Since when are a cop’s feelings deserving of an arrest?”
“I live here and as soon as we heard he got arrested we all went and got the sticker and put it on [our] trucks,” pens a third.
Another adds, “He better keep his kids off the internet. They will see far worse than this.”
The State Attorney’s Office cited the First Amendment and the charges against Webb were dropped. Later, Webb sued for alleged violations of his First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights, but U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard of the Middle District of Florida ruled that the arrest was “arguably justified under Florida’s obscenity law,” giving the officer and his supervisor “qualified immunity,” which means they are protected from the lawsuit.
This case underscores the ongoing debate in the U.S. over free speech and its boundaries, especially around expressions some might find offensive or derogatory. It also reflects how the First Amendment remains a contentious issue, with some insisting their right to free expression is under threat, while others argue for consideration that certain messages will have on the population.
What are your thoughts on this story? Please share your thoughts with us and then share it with your friends so we can get the conversation going!
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