Across the sea

We saw and marveled at the courage and the agility of a Malian immigrant in France who saved a 4-year-old boy from falling to a likely death from his apartment balcony.

Let's face it; a lot of people would have wanted to climb the outside of the building to save the little boy.  But wanting to do and doing are two different things, and that's why Mamoudou Gassama was there, placed by heaven to keep the little boy from arriving in heaven long before his time.

Now they're calling Gassama "Spider-Man" with good reason.

He had been across the street watching a football (soccer) game on tv when he saw the boy hanging from the balcony, and decided to help. “I ran. I crossed the street to save him,” he told French President Emmanuel Macron. “When I started to climb, it gave me courage to keep climbing. God helped me, too," he said. “Thank God I saved him.”

Once again, France demonstrates how people should be treated. Macron granted Gassama French citizenship, gave him a certificate of bravery and dedication, and appointed him to a firefighter job.

Meanwhile...where was the father of this 4-year-old? Well, it seems that the father, as yet unidentified, had left the apartment and was playing Pokemon Go.

The rescue

First, he left to go shopping, and on the way home was distracted by getting into chasing those stupid Pokemon people around the streets of Paris while his son's life literally hung in the balance. Chief Paris prosecutor François Molins said that the father has been charged with "failure to meet parental obligations." 

Macron and Gassama

"The father left the apartment (to go) shopping and then decided to play Pokemon Go in the street which took a little time before he returned home,” Molins said, adding that a window had been left open, which allowed the boy access to the balcony.

The father could be sentenced to two years in jail when he appears in court in September. The child has been placed in foster care. And the boy's mother, according to Molins, couldn't be bothered with taking care of the child because she was visiting France's Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean.

Some things are universal. Heroism, valor, parental neglect. The world would be better to be more like Gassama.

Pokemon Go, for crying out loud. An adult neglecting a child to play a child's game, for crying out loud.