If only Mommy's mistakes could be so easily erased...
I know that no mom is perfect. My standard post-screw-up line is "Well, there goes my Mother-of-the-Year award again!" But I have to wonder, for how many years do I get knocked out of the competition for a mistake that results in a phone call from the police chief's office?
Monday was supposed to be a fresh start. Everyone was healthy. I was almost caught up on sleep. The two freelance projects that had been hanging over my head were at last done and submitted. I was ready to fully focus on my day job.
And then, a little after 4 p.m. came the call.
"Is this Dana? Hi, this is Murial from the chief's office. We got a call from your neighbor, Mr. Anderson, and AJ's okay... "
What?
What?!?!?!
AJ was supposed to have gone to the after-school program. Except nobody knew that because I'd forgotten to send my weekly e-mail instructing his teacher and the Cool Kids staff on which days he should stay and which days he should come home on the bus.
And so he'd come home on the bus. To a locked up house.
As luck would have it, the teenage boy next door missed the bus. When Peter finally made it home 20-minutes later, he spotted AJ sitting on our porch crying, and invited him over to their house. Not knowing what to do next, Peter called his dad. His dad didn't know how to reach us, but remembered where Jeff works and so called the police department in hopes they knew how to track him down.
It just so happened that Jeff was helping coach baseball yesterday afternoon, and so didn't have his phone with him. The police department, being the investigative sorts that they are, pulled Jeff's emergency contact information and came up with my work phone number.
Does this kind of thing happen to anybody else? To screw up is one thing. To screw up in such a way that my boss finds out (I had to explain why I needed to leave early), my husband's colleagues find out (I guess I'm glad he doesn't work for social services), my neighbors find out, as do all sorts of people involved in my son's education and well-being. To achieve all that through one forgotten e-mail, well, that takes a special kind of talent!
I quickly called the Andersons, thanked Peter profusely and assured him I was on my way to get AJ.
Did I mention Monday was the first day of this year's portion of the I-35 Mega-project? Forty-five minutes later I finally completed the normally 20-minute ride and retrieved AJ.
Thank goodness the temperature wasn't -10 degrees. Thank goodness for good neighbors.
And yes, I've now sent an e-mail with after-school instructions for the next two weeks.
Way to go, Dana. I hate to tell you, but the only other incident like that that I recall was when one of our neighbors purposely locked their son out of the house after school on may days because they didn't trust him.
ReplyDeleteTime for a backup plan that AJ can take responsibility for - start with questions like "what would you do IF..." He's old enough. In this case, the answer could be "a neighbor he can/should go to. Knowing your cell phone number would be a really good idea, too. He's a little too young for a hidden key, going into the house alone and calling you, but that will come.
All's well that ends well.
Wow -- how scary! I'm glad it turned out OK. Easy mistake to make! My biggest fear is that I'll leave the kids in the car while I go to work.
ReplyDelete