The other day in a burst of New Year’s Resolution fever, Sam and I went to the gym along with everyone else with the same resolution to work out more. Needless to say, there were quite a lot of us workin’ it — or trying to! Sam scampered off to the Kid Zone. After my class was over, I came in to extract him.
He found his cool Stride Rite Lightsaber sneaks right away and went to slip them on, but for some reason they didn’t seem to fit right. “Oh c’mon, just put ’em on,” I was thinking to myself. Then I quickly noticed that although the sneakers looked exactly like his, his feet were way actually longer than the sneakers. Weird! Even he couldn’t have had that much of a growth spurt in just one hour!
Using my impressive legal deduction skills from law school, I surmised that we had the wrong pair of sneakers on our hands — or feet for that matter. (See, a law degree does come in handy for everyday life!) So we searched through the cubicles for his real shoes several times over. Alas they were not there. As the Irish say, we were “gobsmacked!” (Love that word – it’s Irish and means flabbergasted.) What in the world was going on?! We quickly suspected that perhaps someone had worn Sam’s pair home by accident, leaving behind their much smaller pair. Yikes!
The child care person said, “Oh, I know who you mean! They usually comes here on these days,” etc.
“He can’t even fit these on his feet. He has no shoes to wear, and it is 40 degrees out and raining,” I protested.
She just stood there looming perplexed until I said, “Maybe you could call them?”
Not exactly rocket science.
She was all flustered and ambled off to find their number and call them. A few minutes later, she came back saying, ‘They aren’t home. Maybe we can try them back later.”
“How about their cell phone?” I suggested.
“Oh, yeah! That’s a great idea!” she said.
So she ambled off again to call them on their cell phone. When she returned, she said, “I got them, and they will be here in 15-20 minutes!”
So we waited. It ended up being much longer than that. When they arrived, the boy saw Sam holding his sneakers. He playfully kicked the too-big shoes off his feet as hard as he could. They went flying across the lobby, hitting a couple of sweaty New Year’s Resolutioners along the way.
Soon the sneakers were restored to the rightful owners, and all was well. The mother felt bad and was very apologetic. I told her it was an innocent mistake which it definitely was. And it was really nice of her to drive all the way back to the gym right away.
Of course once we got in the car, I called Daddy Mac and was whinging (another great Irish word for complaining.) He was sympathetic and all. Then he said reflectively, “I bet there are plenty of parents in Newtown who wished their only problem was missing sneakers.”
Wow. Double wow. He is truly my better half.
LibbY
