Throwback Thursday: Two Years Ago Today

There was that day exactly two years ago when, for a brief moment, I thought one of my sons had been kidnapped and learned one of my adult daughters *maybe* *almost* had been. Props to all my fellow moms who manage to cling to their sanity day after day. I hope you enjoy my little jog down memory lane (maybe you can relate?):

As I was loading groceries into my car, my phone rang and showed that W~ was calling me, so I answered it with a, “Hey,” and an unfamiliar, adult male voice said, “Hi, this is Tony . . .”

OHMYGOSH I ONLY KNOW ONE TONY AND YOU ARE NOT HIM. WHERE IS MY SON, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM, AND HOW MUCH RANSOM MONEY DO YOU WANT?????

” . . . [Last Name Which I Can’t Remember because who was this MAN???], the bus driver for Bus [#]. I found this phone left on the bus and didn’t know who it belonged to, so I just dialed ‘Mom.'”

“Ahhh!” I said with relief, “You have W~’s phone. The Korean kid.”

“Oh, W~! He’s such a great kid! He’s a really great student! I can hold on to his phone for him, or you can pick it up at the bus garage.”

A little friendly banter, much appreciation, and the decision that W~ could just get the phone tomorrow, and I was on my way. When I told W~ I’d identified him as “the Korean kid” he was all, “MO-OM!” And I was like, “What? Is there another Korean kid on your bus? I didn’t know he knew you by your first name, and this seemed like the quickest way to identify you, all things considered.”

And W~ was all, “He’s the most awesome bus driver! He knows all of our names!”

So that’s great. My kid has an awesome bus driver but a racist mother who grew up with bus drivers that just picked kids up, dropped them off, and looked like they wished we were all dead in the interim. I don’t know if any of them ever knew my name. Still, W~ was at home and not being held for ransom, which was great in and of itself, but especially great because only a couple hours earlier I’d gotten an email from L~ telling me about the well-groomed, well dressed guy (TED BUNDY) who hit on her in a train station in France.

Apparently he came up to her and started speaking to her in French, but then switched to English when he realized she was from America (BILINGUAL TED BUNDY) and told her he had seen her “from afar” and thought she was just so beautiful and, though he knew this would be awkward in front of her friends (could they please look away . . . )

At this point a trainer missionary, seeing L~ was a bit stunned, quickly jumped into the conversation, explained that they were missionaries and identified them all as Soeurs (which is French for sisters, and also, apparently, has the distinct connotation, or perhaps denotation, in religious contexts of being French for nuns). Théodore Bundie apologised and walked away.

I emailed her back to ask what she thought he was planning to do if her fellow missionaries had, indeed, looked away.

“We’ve been debating that,” she replied. “Either kiss me or kidnap me we guess, but we’re leaning toward kiss me.”

Of course, the tiny remaining 15-year-old piece of my heart, (you know, that piece that inexplicably fell in love with the Twilight books) was thinking, “A romantic overture by a dapper stranger in a French train station. Le Sigh! There is something I’ll never get to check off my bucket list.”

Drowning it out, of course, was the mother voice in my head: I must go kill him now to prevent future possible deaths. Not every young, beautiful girl he meets in a train station is going to be wearing a tag that says, “Nun Bourret.”

But she’s safe. W~ is safe. And I’m still sober.

#Winning