a public apology

When I was a child we lived in a small town. Once every couple of months we would head to a larger town that had a mall and a wal-mart. While in the stores I would inevitably get lost. It was a confluence of events really. I was born curious and, I suspect, prone to being an extrovert. My mom is not the tallest person you will ever meet. I was not and am not currently a tall person. So you see, it was inevitable that I would get lost at the K-Mart. We'd get into the maze of clothing racks. I would linger longer over something and turn around to find that I couldn't see my mom. And then adventure and tears normally ensued. The one time I recall the best was that I finally gave up trying to find my mom and wandered to the customer service desk. My guess is that it was with the encouragement of some nice K-Mart employee. And there I would whimper my mom's name "Betty Way"and they would ask me again because that doesn't sound like a person's name and "can you understand what that little lost girl is saying?" and I would again say "Betty Way" and they would call for "Betty Way" over the intercom and my mom would come to the front half furious and half relieved and then when she saw little whimpering girl, she just felt relieved. The thing is that "Betty Way" is not my mom's name. See I had a real problem with the /r/ sound for nearly forever and my last name didn't help matters.

So today I was at the grocery store. @ was desperate to go see pets. I needed to stop and read lightbulbs so I sent him ahead to pets (at the end of the next aisle over) and told him to stay there, I'd be there in a minute. I called Jonathan about the lightbulb/ extension cord he wanted. I walked to pets. And you guessed it, kid is gone. So I start looking and see his red shirt darting by at the end of the aisle, by lightbulbs. So I run, but he is too. Then I see him duck down the milk aisle, So I run. And now I'm calling out my child's rather unique name. Now if you were an adult and you saw a noticeably different boy running the wrong way from a noticeably different mother yelling a name, you'd grab that kid and point to the woman right? Well you weren't around. Not a helpful person could be found in the store. Then I saw the kid run through the produce section. Then I saw him run through the lightbulbs and then I couldn't see him anymore. Until finally I hear over the intercom my kid's name looking for his mom. And then I'm running to the customer service desk.

Now your saying, why didn't you go to the customer service desk? Because my kid doesn't listen to it and I don't think he would know what to do necessarily. Because I'm a bad mom that hadn't taught him what to do if he got lost. This is the first time I ever let him out of my sight in the store. And the thing is he normally refuses to use his language, so I wasn't sure how he was going to tell someone he's lost. For real, we've done our best on the language front but I can't make the kid produce it. Anyway there was a happy ending and he somehow knew what he was supposed to do.

But all of that to say, I'm sorry I was a frustrating kid mom.