Thursday, March 13, 2008

The Saga of the Shorts Continues

Yesterday, those mysterious red shorts finally disappeared from Baby Bear’s backpack. Either his teacher reads this blog, or the mother of the student who owns the red shorts does. I wonder if she drove down there and knocked the fire extinguisher off the wall with her purse.

This afternoon, I went out as usual to meet his school bus. Because he’s disabled, it stops right in front of our house.

Baby Bear jumped out in his bare feet. There was nothing the least bit unusual about this, since he almost always removes his socks and shoes during the ride home. If he comes off the bus socked and shod, then I have to tell the driver there’s been a mistake, and that this is someone else’s child. It beats trying to read nametags.

The bus attendant handed me the socks and shoes, and wished me a good day. I asked, “What about his backpack?”

She searched the bus, while I turned to see which way my son had fled this time, as he seldom goes straight into the house unless I’m right at his side or directly behind him. Today he plunged into his dad’s Buick Riviera and laid on the horn.

The attendant reappeared empty-handed. She couldn’t find a backpack. They must’ve forgotten it at school.

This has also happened before.

I thanked her and the driver, and removed the Bear from the Buick before he could figure out how to hotwire it and go joyriding.

That’s when I noticed he was wearing his extra pair of shorts—the spare set I always put in his backpack each day.


That meant the ones he’d worn to school this morning—the same brown denim pair I had to track down last week and bring back like Indiana Jones retrieving the Holy Grail—had obviously been soiled . . . and left at the school.

Time to fetch my whip and fedora. Here we go again.


UPDATE 3/14: Friday afternoon he came home with his backpack--and the brown denim shorts were inside, secured in a plastic bag.

So all is right in the world chez Lingefelt . . . but for how long?

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