Almost every summer, you hear a tragic story about a child who dies of overheating — hyperthermia — in a car. His parents left him there; he died.

Lately, I've been hearing another story, too: A parent goes into the store to pick up a pizza or a prescription while the kids wait in the car. The parent pops back out, and there's a cop scowling. Almost half the states have some kind of law against leaving kids unattended in vehicles. But strangely, those two types of kids-in-car stories have nothing to do with each other.

You see, in almost all the tragedies, the child was forgotten in the car. Usually, it happens this way: A parent or grandparent is doing something out of his routine. Say, for instance, it's usually the mom who drops the baby off at day care, but today she has a doctor's appointment, so Dad gets that task.

The baby falls asleep in her car seat, facing backward. She's unseen and now unheard. Dad, on automatic pilot, drives straight to work. He gets to the parking lot, grabs his bag and heads in, forgetting the baby in the back.

Yes, forgetting. It happens. We may wish to think only monsters would forget a child in the back, but that's because it is so painful to contemplate the awful truth: Loving parents forget, too.

And then they remember for the rest of their lives.

Now contrast that scenario with the mom I was just speaking to today, Samantha Morse. She has three little girls — a 6-year-old and twins, age 3 — and lives in Massachusetts. Last week, she had to go pick up a dress, so she took the girls with her. By the time they reached the store, the twins had fallen asleep. The 6-year-old was drawing and wanted to wait in the car. The mom had to think about whether this made sense. She considered the facts:

1) She'd be in the store for only a few minutes.

2) She could see the car through the store's big plate glass window.

3) It was about 80 degrees, overcast.

If she woke the twins to drag everyone into the store, a 10-minute errand would become a 20-minute mess. So instead, she rolled down the windows and went in, solo, to get her dress.

By the time she came out and was about to drive away, a cop car had driven up. Then another. Then a firetruck. One of the cops got out and told her to turn off the engine. "Did you leave your children alone in the car?" he asked.

What?

The officers had gotten a call from a concerned bystander. They'd heard there were kids alone in a car, looking "bad." The fireman went over and touched the 6-year-old's leg to check for overheating. Then he laughed. "She's the perfect temperature."

Case closed?

No. While the firemen drove away, the policeman kept asking the mom whether the windows had been open or closed, the door locked or unlocked. "I felt like he was trying to catch me in a lie," Morse said. Eventually, he told her to wait while he interviewed the store clerks to make sure her story panned out.

Of course it did! This wasn't a bank heist; it was an errand, just like the ones our parents ran while we waited in the car. "I'm going to let you go," the cop finally announced. "But I think you are playing with fire."

And I think the policeman was playing with reality. Our fear of kids dying has become so obsessive that we congratulate ourselves for picturing the very worst possible scenario every time a parent separates from a child.

Do not leave your children in an extremely hot car. And do not leave them there for a very long time in any type of weather condition. But let's not criminalize rational parents running errands, either.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)" and "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy ([email protected]) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.