Less than Brilliant

Most people have these little moments of brilliance, like when they’re looking all over the place for their glasses, and the glasses are actually sitting on top of their head. I sort of did that one a notch or two better on Saturday.

Our family went shopping at Target. When the 5 of us shop, the important thing is to keep track of Skylar, our youngest, who is closing in on 3 years old and knows quite well what SHE would like to shop for, thank you very much! We can ask Raeann or Lincoln to watch over Skylar for a couple seconds at a time, but in a busy department store I’d rather not rely on kids that are easily distracted themselves. So, while Andrea does most of the shopping, I do most of the Skylar-tracking. Every now and then she wants a ride on my shoulders, too, which is nice.

So we’re in Target for, like, an hour. We checked out clothes for Raeann and Andrea, socks for me, and had slowly passed through the toy section. All pretty much without a hitch.

Then we came to the Nintendo DS aisle. Raeann has decided she wants to buy High School Musical for the DS, so she was really checking this area out. Skylar and I were with her, and Andrea and Lincoln were an aisle over. I was amazed by one of the games they had on display. It was one of these new basketball games where, I swear, it looked just like live action NBA! The player movement was amazing. If you only glanced quickly at the screen, you’d think it was a real game on tv! Unbelievable!

Noticing that Skylar was not with us anymore, I backed out of the aisle and over to the intersection where Andrea and Lincoln now were. Looking around, there was no sign of Skylar!

“Hey! Where’s Skylar?” Andrea looked at me. Her brow furrowed just a bit. The sense of urgency that a parent should feel when their 2-year-old is missing didn’t seem to be there, though. That angered me a bit.

“Where’s Skylar? IS SHE WITH YOU???”

Andrea’s mouth dropped open. Then I happened to notice my hands. They were firmly grasping ankles. Tiny, 2-year-old, pink-socked ankles. Uh-oh.

I can imagine how this looked to Andrea. There’s her loving, frantic husband, standing there demanding to know where his precious daughter had gone, while said daughter sat patiently perched upon his shoulders all the while! Andrea later told me that she thought I was kidding around at first. It wasn’t until she saw the panic in my eyes that she knew I wasn’t.

My shoulders slumped. I was relieved, but thoroughly beaten. Not sure how I’ll ever live this one down.