Perception

This illustration is only loosely related to my post, but I will say that what inspired it was last night's bedtime routine. I was laying in bed, and Jeremy pulled the covers straight to reveal a spider in between some now-non-existent folds (I seriously think spiders are really dumb. "Hey, this looks like a good place to build my new home," as they crawl inside a pair of pants or into the folds of a blanket....stupid spiders...) "Hold very still...." he said. I certainly wasn't going to anger the arachnid by moving, so I held my breath, and then watched stiffly as Jeremy flicked it away with his finger.

"NOW KILL IT!" I exclaimed. 

Jeremy dashed to the light switch and turned on all the lights (we only had a lamp on) and scoured the floor.

"Well...OH! Here it i--...no that's a fuzzy....it could have been a fuzzy on the bed..." he mused. 

"It wasn't." 

"Oh, well, it's gone now."

My skin crawled and I imagined the spider doing some fantastic mid-air acrobatics and landing on my pillow.

Jibblies...eee....

And now for a story:


The enormous cat playfully batted a deeply scarred, large plastic ball into the water and then plunged in after it. There were squeals of delight from all of us standing at the tiger's habitat window. Nothing draws attention like a big cat actually enjoying water, and especially so for me since every time we had visited this particular tiger's habitat it would give the impression it had melted. "Ugh...melted tiger, let's move on to the lemur habitat where they are no doubt doing something off-color..."

Eva's face was pressed up against the window, and I was nearly there, except that the stroller I was pushing was as close to the window as it could get, affording my two littlest ladies a good view. Jeremy was nearby, trying to get a good look.

Jeremy, after a few minutes, tore his eyes away from the giant beast, and asked, "Where's Josh?"

I shrugged, still mesmerized by the swimming cat, and looked around. There was a huge group of people standing around watching the feline play with its giant plastic ball, and no sign of our son.

Jeremy, with the look of an alarmed, but still with-it father, dashed off to look for our missing child. "He's in so much trouble," he said before fading into the crowd.

I backed away from the giant glass window, and parked myself under some misters where I could see all the people coming and going, so I could keep an eye open for a certain tow-headed boy.

"Mommy?" Eva began. "Where's Daddy?"

I sighed.

"He went to find Josh," I replied. I wasn't too worried, but, then again, he had only been gone for 30 seconds. How far could he have gone?

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"I'm a missing person," Josh said, looking intently into the eyes of the zoo staff members.

They then duly followed his counsel and started to walk him out to our car where Joshua was sure we were.

We weren't.

We were still ogling the swimming tiger in the Asian Highlands. Half a mile away.

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Jeremy dashed up to us, full-blown panic displayed all over his face.

"I CAn'T FiND HiM," he managed. "GET THE ZOO PERSON TO DO SOMETHING OVER THE INTERCOM!"

He then dashed off again.

I stood dumbly in the shadow of the rocks beneath the misters for a moment, and walked in the direction of where zoo people should be. Of course, there weren't any, since the zoo closed its shops early because of Jeremy's company's work party. Great. I walked back to the cool shelter of the rocks and stood there for another ten minutes, catching no sign of Josh. Or Jeremy, for that matter.

"Mommy?" Eva started again. "Where's Josh?"

"I don't know."

Eva shriveled a little, and began wailing piteously, and weakly, obviously devastated, "Josh! Jooooshhh....Jooooooooshhhhhhhhh......"

Oh joy...this was going to be a long afternoon.

My phone then rang.

"Hello??"

"I found him."

"Oh, good."

I then hung up and started in the direction Jeremy had run off.

I started grumbling to myself.

"That boy...if only he would have just stayed next to us, then Jeremy wouldn't have had to run off...and now I have to go up this stupid hill all by myself, pushing this 200 lb stroller, in the heat of the day, with a crying 5-year-old, what was that boy thinking? He knows he shouldn't run off like that...grumble grunt gripe...independent spirit...grrowl...boundaries...grrrr...."

As I toiled my way up the hill, I saw Jeremy and Joshua at the top at the enormous lion-head fountain grabbing a drink.

"Boy, is Jeremy going to be mad at him, and why is he letting him drink water? He ran off, he deserves to be thirsty....poopy hill..."

I managed to make it to the top, and was met by the smiling face of my husband.

What the...

"I found them almost at the car," he said brightly.

"Yeah?" I replied, completely winded. How come they haven't installed an escalator on that hill?

I looked down at my very penitent Joshua, my eyes demanding an explanation.

"I thought you guys left the tigers," he said. "And I didn't know where you had gone, so I found the zoo people, and since I thought maybe you had gone to the car, I told them to take me there."

What do you say to that? We had all been lost in the enormous tiger crowd. No wonder he thought we had left.

"Errr..." I stammered. "Well, I'm glad that you went to the zoo employees, Josh. That was good...Next time, though, just stay where you are, and we will find you. Okay?"

"Okay," he said, obviously traumatized that he had been a Missing Person.

Perception. It's a wily thing.