I Was Just Making Sure They Were Paying Attention

It's been a long afternoon.

After falling asleep watching Toy Story 2 for the five thousandth twentieth time, I woke up just in time to find we needed to get in the car QUICK to pick up Jacob. Thank you Elizabeth for writing on my face with the blue ball point pen or I might still be lying there.

By the time I strapped my two diaper/underwear clad preschoolers into their safety seats, I was already ten minutes late. The light at the middle school up the street put me behind another five. Dang kids wanting to GO HOME by CROSSING THE STREET!

When I pulled into the school I was already late enough to have to wait for every. single. highschooler to cross the driveway or just stand their gabbing while I wait-wait-waited and I swear I never thought about plowing them down inching into them little by little to MAYBE get them to mosey out of the fricking street.

As I finally pulled around the back of the building where my child should have been seething waiting, he wasn't there. I quickly scanned through the eight kids left sitting and he was nowhere to be found. I pulled my car up to see if he was sitting behind a pole. Wasn't there either. The duty teacher came over panic-stricken and asked if Jacob had rode home with a friend by mistake. I proceeded to flip out and wonder out loud, DID YA'LL JUST PUT MY KID IN SOMEONE ELSE'S CAR? And my heart started to pound through my ears and that Frito chili pie I had for lunch started moving on up.

So I parked my car, released my almost naked children, and headed for the building, or the office, or the classroom, or who knows where I was going? My kid was MISSING!

And as I blew past that duty teacher, she just happened to say, "Could he be in a help class?"

And then it dawned on me.

I signed my kid, that one I was so worried about, the one I apparently remember nothing about, up for the after-school algebra (seriously, algebra, in third grade!) help class his teacher offered in a note the night before.

I wasn't late. He was late. And now I was early. So. Very. Early. Standing like a crazy person with two almost-naked children out in the kinda-sorta-you might say it's chilly weather. With blue pen marks on my face.

Ummm....yeah.

And I wonder why some of those mothers make fun of me.