I was on the phone to my sister. She was talking about prams. The girls were talking to me. I heard them say they were going to fetch L's newspaper; L is away.
I heard a door close. I heard a door open. I finished the call to my sister. I thought the girls were home.
The girls weren't home. It doesn't take ten minutes to fetch the papers from across the road. I thought they'd be out chatting to the neighbours. I put on some shoes and went out to see.
The girls weren't there. The girls weren't in L's front yard.
This is the point in the narrative where a good free ranger would think to herself: I wonder ? Perhaps they've walked down to the park ? I'll wander down and take a look
Instead, high on sudden adrenalin, I thought: They're gone. Someone has taken them. The default position of fear.
C went to look. They were in the park. I yelled, they cried.
Where were you ??
We told you - we were going to get L's paper and go to the park!!!
I didn't hear them. I missed that part of the message. I was listening to my sister describe her pram. I heard them say they were going to fetch L's paper. That's all. Nothing happened.
But my heart races like it did.
As Arwen would say, it's a fail. An epic free range fail.
Nah. It only would have been a free range fail if they'd gone to get the paper and they actually had been kidnapped. It's just a listening fail. Or a multitasking fail. Actually, I hear all multitasking is a fail, we just refuse to admit it and keep doing it anyway. ;)
ReplyDeleteOr a mother going straight from sanity to freaking out in 2.2 seconds fail!
ReplyDeleteA calm parenting fail. I had one of those earlier, but it was directed at the children, not the boogeymen out to get them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for keeping me company in my failure :)
ReplyDeleteDue to a communication fail, I became convinced that my daughter and her friend had left the house without telling me at some ridiculous hour of the morning and went somewhere that they knew I wouldn't approve of them going at that hour. Turned out that they stopped off somewhere unscheduled later in that morning when they went out for a walk that I knew about and then forgot to tell me about it, leaving me to get a somewhat garbled version of the morning's going ons from someone else. I had a lot of apologizing to do. 0_x So. Been there, done that, felt like a big dork.
ReplyDeleteLOL! I just did that today when I thought one was here doing something with the other, only to realise that wasn't the case......total freakout, until I found him quietly going about his 'busyness' in the backyard!
ReplyDelete