So I lost my kid yesterday. Oh, and I'm due to give birth this week. He's not quite 2 and somehow escaped my notice for, ohh, about 4 minutes while we were at a friend's new apartment with another friend and all of our children, 11 in all, 3 of which are precisely Elisha's size. He trucked his little self down the stairs, out the door, and down the street; most of that time we were frantically looking for him around the apartment, and then spread out towards the great mortifying outdoors. After about 45 seconds, we saw a lady down the street crouching down and it ocurred to us that maybe she had Elisha, so I sent Ben down the street to check while I waddled with all my might after him. Sure enough, this kind lady had intercepted my mischievous toddler in the middle of the road, heading towards God-knows-where, and her first impulse (instead of looking around to see 8 children and a herniated woman running around like maniacs) was to call the police.
Nice.
So now I had to talk to the police, tell them my name, why my child got away from me and, dread of dreads, my location. They sent a car around to scope out the situation, and the lady-cop who came in began asking me the probably-usual gauntlet of questions, like how he got out, how it was I didn't manage to notice this, et cetera, et cetera. What she said and what I heard were, naturally, two different things entirely, so my rough translation would go something like:
"Are you an imbecile? Can you not keep up with a 2-year-old?"
"I should probably haul you in now for child neglect."
"What, your children are running wild through the streets and you're PREGNANT again?!?"
After this, she left, and I searched high and low for some duct tape. Unable to find any, I merely became incredibly irritable for the remainder of the afternoon, questioning my basic competency not only as a mother but as a human being and a citizen of Earth, and suddenly craving something very, very sweet to take away the bitter taste of my run-in with the law.
--Teri.
