Wednesday, January 30, 2008

The worst 10 minutes of my life.

K (my partner in crime) stayed home sick today and went to go grab the boy from school this afternoon. Lil b (who is almost 3) was happily playing with his laptop in his room, so I went to go figure out why my left contact was freaking out. After a few seconds of removing, rinsing, putting it back in, removing, etc. I heard a really loud thud from the other room. Immediately I thought that little dude had either dropped something or managed to kill himself somehow, so I ran into his room.

He wasn't there. I looked in the living room and kitchen. Not there, either. Not in his brother's room. Not in the bathroom or the laundry room. Not on the other side of my bed. WTF? By this point I'm calling his name, telling him that this is NOT funny and he needs to come out right now.

And then I saw the the door was unlocked.

So I stuck my head outside and looked in the hall. No sign of him. I threw on a hoodie (I wasn't wearing a shirt, just a bra) and skipped the shoes and ran outside.

From the front door there are a few ways to go. On either side there are metal stairs with concrete at the bottom. A fall down either one of those is going to be an ER visit at best. Then there's the landing to the parking garage full of people who can't be arsed to go slow or look where they're going. Further up is the elevator which goes all the way up to the roof of the parking garage.

I figured he went to the parking garage to look for K, so I ran out there first. No one. So then I thought that he'd maybe gone down the stairs (which is what we do when I let him walk to go places) so I ran down the set closest to the apartment and the set down the hall. Then I thought maybe he went up, since I never let him do that. So I ran up to the third floor. Nothing.

I went back in the apartment to see if maybe he'd been hiding and came out when he realized that no one was looking for him. That would have been too easy, though.

I ran back to the parking garage, thinking maybe he was on the other side of a car and I just hadn't seen him. There are a couple of cars exactly like ours in the garage, so maybe he was trying to get into one of them. I searched our level, looking under cars and yelling for him. The whole time I was running around and freaking out, I was speed-dialing K, who was not picking up. (Turns out his phone never went off. Fucking Verizon.)

By the time I came out of the parking garage the second time, my vocal cords were shot and I was hyperventilating and taking out my phone to call 911 because it'd been long enough that he could be anywhere at that point. And then I heard, from my right, the sound of a very small person running and crying. So I ran down the landing and turned the corner to find lil b, with no coat and no shoes, running toward me. I scooped him up, and he said "I was in the elevator! I was lost! I pushed the buttons and I waited on you and I was scared!"

So we came back inside and I collapsed into a coughing, hoarse mess on the floor and had a nervous breakdown with little dude on my lap having a nervous breakdown of his own. And of course K and B walked in at that point.

Yet another reason I want OUT of this apartment. The doors are impossible to childproof and we can't install more locks up higher or switch out the knobs.

I have hunch that this will be funny in like 12 years when he's dating and I get to retell the story. But right now? Yeah, not so much.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh, hon! I'm so sorry! My heart is pounding for you and I have tears!

But it is kind of funny... Especially after the relief sets in... Hopefully he won't go wandering off anymore after that experience! How's the house-buying going?

Random said...

yeah, i have a feeling it'll be one of my favorite stories about him once i can stop having panic attacks over the "what if..." scenarios that i keep coming up with in my head. being a mom is HARD. :P

the housebuying is going slowly. we're under contract and are doing the inspection this afternoon. after that we do the appraisal. i'm so nervous about this! and then i feel dumb for being nervous. heh.