{"id":32149,"date":"2025-12-06T16:24:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T16:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/?p=32149"},"modified":"2025-12-06T16:24:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T16:24:43","slug":"32149","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/?p=32149","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Except this morning, the bench wasn\u2019t empty.<\/p>\n<p>I noticed him peripherally at first. Just a splash of aggressive red in my gray visual field. I ran past, but something\u2014a hitch in my legal brain that notices inconsistencies\u2014made me slow down, stop, and look back.<\/p>\n<p>A boy. He couldn\u2019t have been more than three years old.<\/p>\n<div class=\"hb-ad-inpage\">\n<div class=\"hb-ad-inner\">\n<div id=\"hbagency_space_218532_2\" class=\"hbagency_cls hbagency_space_218532\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>He sat motionless on the bench, his legs dangling a good six inches above the ground. He was wearing a red puffer jacket that was slightly too large, swallowing his small hands. His feet were encased in muddy sneakers that didn\u2019t match\u2014one featured\u00a0<span class=\"ng-star-inserted\">Paw Patrol<\/span><span class=\"ng-star-inserted\">, the other was plain blue. In his lap, he clutched a stuffed rabbit that had clearly survived a war; the fabric was worn to the mesh, one ear hung by a thread, and the original white had faded to the color of dirty snow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/?p=32150\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-32065 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/tap-here.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"173\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Except this morning, the bench wasn\u2019t empty. I noticed him peripherally at first. Just a splash of aggressive red in my gray visual field. I ran past, but something\u2014a hitch in my legal brain that notices inconsistencies\u2014made me slow down, stop, and look back. A boy. He couldn\u2019t have been more than three years old&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/?p=32149\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32149"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32153,"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32149\/revisions\/32153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsx48.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}