In The Blink Of An Eye

I hope my friend Angie will not mind me posting her story here. Actually, Angie is my administrative assistant as well as my friend. She is really good. So good, my new boss is stealing her away from me for herself. I'm not upset about that because I think it will be a good move for Angie, who is a really hard worker and a single mom to 3 teenagers. Her oldest is 16 and is working this summer at the University. Yesterday his department called looking for him saying that he had not returned after lunch. They had let a good hour go by before calling her. Also, they were in a pickle because he had his boss's keys in his pocket, which were the master keys to everything in their building. Angie of course was concerned, and took the van to to see if she could find him in what she hoped might be some of his suspected hangouts. She came back empty handed. She called his boss back, and by this time his whole department was looking for him (and their keys). I heard her on the phone arguing with his supervisor, saying it was time to call Campus Police. She asked me to drive her back up to his job, she was going to wait it out there. (Our campus is HUGE in case your wondering why we do all this driving around. Huge enough for a teenager to get lost.....) After I got back, she called and said the police were there and asked me to pull up the cameras on a couple of our stores that he usually frequents for lunch. My assistant manager who is also a technical whiz, pulled him up in no time. He had come into the store at the bio-science building and bought a sandwich at 12:01 pm. Now it was after 3pm and no one had seen him since. I know (from experience) that kids do some crazy and irrational things sometimes, but this kid, not so much. And I kept trying to hang on to that feeling, because I was starting to feel the panic and the helplessness. I could only imagine what Angie was feeling.
****************************************
One time LG got lost in Sears at the mall. He was about 3 or 4 at the time, and it was just like they say. I had he and his brother right by my side as I was checking out new clothes for them for the school year. They were bored to death, and not giving me a moments peace. I was concentrating on the sizes on the rack for oh, say, 30 seconds and I looked down and he was gone. NG was right there too and he did not even see him disappear. We frantically searched the area briefly, and then I immediately went to customer service and reported it. I was already completely panicked and fighting it, and the staff certainly was not moving fast enough for my satisfaction. It was a huge effort to keep my voice and my actions under some semblance of control. They radioed each other all over the store, and I said I was going looking. They formed a posse too and we started spreading out, them talking on their radios with that look of concern on their faces. I'm sure my features were completely distorted by the panic I felt inside. The more we searched the more my feelings escalated. It took everything I had to not completely freak out. The rational part of me told myself that little boys do these sorts of things sometimes. I know because I had 3 little brothers and the youngest did this exact thing to my mother once in Mervyns department store. Still, the other part of me was eyeing the exits and wondering which one the pervert escaped from with my kid!

I sensed him before I really saw him. My peripheral vision caught his movement thru the clothing racks (pint size, about 3 feet tall) before I really caught him in my eyesight. I turned around and actually chased this slight vision I had caught, came around a corner, and there he was walking towards me with tears streaming down his face. We were far from where we started. Needless to say our shopping trip was over. We went out into the mall and he sat on my lap (which he had not wanted to do for some time) and he cried and I cried and even his 9 year old brother cried with relief. I asked him why he did it. He was just playing, and he thought he could find his way back. He was wrong. He got lost. Now he is 15 and I still have to watch his over-calculation of his abilities without undermining his confidence. It's a tight-rope. You never want to revisit this feeling, but when you are raising kids, there is no guarantee.

*********************************************
The cops searched the building at bio-science. I wondered if they had thought to go look at her car. I wondered if he'd gotten upset with his job and decided to quit and was waiting it out at the car. I drove to the deck where she parks and found her car. He was not there. I got caught in a down pour and came back looking like a wet rat. I did not care. I was fighting that panicked feeling by keeping busy. Also, I was praying. Constantly. This did eventually relieve my panic because after about 45 minutes of it, this feeling of peace came over me. I somehow knew he was all right. But I was also feeling impatient because how in the world does a 16 year old kid responsible enough to hold a job get lost??? Now I was praying for his deliverance. Finally at 5 pm, I decided to make a quick trip home, feed the dogs, change my clothes and come back. Angie had called saying she was coming back to our office now to wait, and that she was not leaving campus until they found him. I told her I would be back. Lynda, my assistant manager was there with her. We had no real plan except to just hang together. I was getting exasperated with the authorities, and I'm sure Angie was beyond that. At 6:30 I was driving back (in another torrential downpour---the flash flood type) when Lynda called to say the police had found him! He had been locked in a computer lab for 6 hours. It was the last day of finals for summer session and parts of campus were preparing to shut down for the next 2 1/2 weeks. Computer theft is a problem, and so they were locking it up tight for the shut-down. He managed to email his way out of there. That's how they found him. It was hard to remember personal email addresses, but he finally got hold of someone in Housing. It still took nearly 6 hours. Still, now he is safe and sound, and it's all good.

Aves and I were talking about the need to advocate for our children when we were in Haiti last month. All children, not just minority children need our advocacy. Angie had to press the supervisor to get the police involved. They probably did not want anyone to know that someone unauthorized had a set of state keys on his person. On the other hand, they had lost a set of state keys which is definitely not good. So they were in a bind. I know she would have gotten the police involved regardless. I remembered to say a prayer of thanks. God is faithful. He told me Nick was OK, and I believed Him. I was impatient for deliverance. I guess I need to work on that.