The Other Day, I saw this and "Ow", this one hurt. I thought of this almost 4 years ago when my dear, but cold-hearted, cruel, and evil-to-the-bone friend decided to kidnap my little boy at Target.

We were both planning to attend her baby sister's, oldest child's birthday party at The Jungle. Having left my shopping to be done at the last minute, right before the party, I stopped by the Target across the street to look for a birthday gift. Apparently, she did too. I walked up and down the aisles and finally came across a good idea. My teeny-tiny son was in his stroller right next to me. I was deep in thought, considering which of two products I wanted. Going back and forth between reading the boxes, something felt off, suddenly something was wrong.

I stood up and looked to my right...my boy and the stroller were gone!I was so confused. I mean, he was right there, I had just looked at him 20 seconds before. My heart stopped and I began to move quickly when my dear friend came up trying to return him before I noticed (her conscience told her it was horribly mean thing to do and to stop -unfortunately, it was too late and I was already terrified).

She cringed in self-defense and stammered, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry", before I could cuss her out ...something I had never ever done in our 11 years of friendship.But she unknowingly taught me a huge lesson.

I never that it could happen like that. That's how vulnerable our children are. I could have literally reached out and touched my son. However, being so deep in thought, I was totally oblivious to her presence. I not only missed her walking up the aisle, I didn't catch her walking away with my little boy. Can you believe that? I felt like such a horrible mom until I shared the incident with my fellow mothers. They had all experienced moments of terror having lost track of a child while being distracted, or focused on a task, or even just trying to corral their other children in a public place.

I recognized I needed to find a way to prevent this from happening again.

Well enough with the moral...Soon after, an idea came to me. Why wasn't there a device that could alert you if your child moved or was moved by someone else "out of bounds"? I thought of a clip-on alarm that could be attached to clothing or be strapped onto a little one's wrist that would not only alert you if your child was too far away, but would have a tracking system pointing you in the right direction. It would even having a honing mode that would allow a lost child to find their way back to mom or dad. Forever being a perfectionist and detailed-oriented freak, I had planned to write an illustrated book that would have stories and games teaching parents and small children how to use the technology. I thought of instructing parents to practice at home with their children using the age-appropriate exercises.

I thought this would be great for toddlers, especially as they can get away from you so quickly. Depending on the situation, it would be flexible enough to allow one to adjust the permissible distance alloted from the designated homebase (mom or dad or teamleader). I also knew it could serve double duty for adults as far as trying to keep everyone together in a crowd (my dance mates might remember trying to shop at a fleamarket in Mexico- 11 of us all wanting to go in different directions but without getting lost or left too far behind, agh!). And how about keeping tabs on your teenagers at a themepark? Cell phones are great, but have you ever been the one to explain your exact location to someone on the line while noisy rollercoasters zip up and down and all around you? Have you ever been the one searching for your family in a crowd with 200 people in your way? The list goes on. I knew this was definately better than attaching a leash to a child. While this practice is understandable, it seems so inhumane.

Anyway, as usual, I put my idea on the back burner; I've actually had several great ones that I've seen marketed years later -and in that case, haven't we all? Well, just this year there have been 3 versions of my "Out of Bounds" -the name I came up with- placed on the market. A month ago in the morning I saw the newest one featured on The Today Show.

So the new moral is...Act on your good ideas, instincts and hunches. I thought of pricing this item around $100. I then would only have to sell 10,000 units to make it to $1,000,000. And you know, if you're a wise investor and don't go crazy spending your dough, a cool 1 mil' is more than enough to retire on and generate a healthy income for the rest of your life.I was wrong...could have priced it at $189 and only sold 5,289 devices. Oh, this sucks!!!