Gray hair and wrinkles

No parent wants to misplace her kid while out in public. If you’ve ever been through the experience, you might want to skip right over this. If you’ve never had this experience … you might want to avoid reading this, too.

I was in the market for a new refrigerator so I headed over to the Sears scratch and dent warehouse. This is where, as you might have guessed, all the appliances with cosmetic problems go to be sold. Would I like to have pristine appliances? Sure. However, I am realistic that everything we bring into our house will end up with a ding or a scrape in no time at all. With that in mind, I see no point in spending twice as much for the same washer, dryer, or fridge. The way I look at it, my distress will be greater by a factor of two if I pay full price and end up scratching it the first day it takes up residence here.

So, with both of my boys in tow, I walked into the warehouse. Matthew was about 5, and Elliot was about 2. Elliot had brought a book along, as usual, and Matthew was most likely carrying some sort of plastic creature in his hand or in a pocket.

Appliance shopping is boring in the best of times. With two little ones tagging along, I had to cope with their boredom, too.

Up and down the aisles we went, checking out the fridges. I also checked out the patrons. One guy looked like a biker, with his leathers, facial hair, and tattoos.

After a while, I checked on the boys. Make that “boy,” singular. Matthew was right beside me. Where was Elliot? I called for him. No answer. I walked to the end of the aisle and looked down the previous one and the next one. No Elliot. I called for him again, this time in a louder voice. No answer.

It came to me then where I was: in a warehouse filed with about a hundred refrigerators. I did the math. One 2-year-old plus 100 refrigerators equaled at least 100 places for him to hide … and suffocate.

I ran to the nearest refrigerator and snatched open the door. No Elliot. I slammed the door and ran to the next one. I snapped at Matthew to start doing the same, just as quickly as he could. He stepped up to the job like a trouper.

The whole while I was calling out for Elliot. Open. Slam. “Elliot!” Open. Slam. “Elliot!”

The biker guy glanced over at me and asked if anything was wrong.

“My 2-year-old son is missing. Oh, my god…”

“What’s his name?”

“Elliot. Oh, my god…”

The three of us searched and searched. A salesman came up to the biker and asked what the problem was. Soon the salesman was running around looking.

At this point I had enough adrenaline in my system to rip the doors off the refrigerators. The Hulk had nothing on me, a mom on the hairy edge of panic.

“Ma’am? Ma’am!”

A man’s voice slowly penetrated my pinpoint focus on the rows of refrigerators.

“What?!”

“Is your son’s name Elliot?”

“Yes!”

“Here he is.” The salesman was standing at the end of a row of stoves. They’d arranged them so that they were back to back. There was a gap at the bottom just the right size for a 2-year-old to crawl into. If he had a book with him, it would be the perfect place for him to kick back and read.

I ran over and skidded around the corner. And there he was. Elliot was sitting in between the two stoves at the end of the row, his book open in his lap.

“Honey,” I said in what I hoped was a calm voice. “Can you come out of there, please?”

He closed his book, crawled out, and stood up, looking around at all the grownups looking down at him.

Frankly, I was torn between throttling him and hugging him. I opted for the latter and burst into tears. I wrapped my arms around him and just knelt there on the hard cement floor, shaking from the amount of adrenaline pumping through my body and the sobs that kept escaping.

“Why are you crying, mommy?”

“Oh, honey. I thought you were lost, and it frightened me.” Matthew was standing behind me. “It frightened your brother, too.”

“I was right here, reading.”

“I know that now, honey.” I pulled back and held him by the shoulders. “Look, Elliot. If I call you, you must answer me. You have to. You just have to.”

“I guess I didn’t hear you.”

“Yeah, I guess you didn’t,” I mopped my face with my sleeve. My hands were shaking so badly I probably would have poked my own eye out if I’d tried using my hands.

I stood up and held Elliot’s hand, looked to make sure that Matthew was with us, and left the warehouse. The boys were fine. I felt physically ill as I walked to the car. I was shaky and soaked with sweat. Once we were in the car, I called Ed to tell him what had happened. While he sympathized to an extent, his reaction was more along the lines of, “the little dickens!” than, “oh, god! Are you all right?!” I suppose that it was a case of “you had to be there.” If he had been, maybe that third set of eyes would have spotted Elliot and prevented the panic … but maybe not.

My mother went through the same, “where’s Elliot?” scenario. She was shopping at Costco, and Elliot was misbehaving. Before she knew what had happened, Elliot had vanished. While she, too, was in a panic, my mother immediately went to the exit and told an employee that her grandchild was missing. Via walkie-talkie, word was passed among the employees, and no one was allowed into or out of Costco while the search was on.

Elliot was found, safe and sound. He’d hidden because he was afraid grandma was going to spank him. All he got was a fierce hug from her and a warning from her never to hide like that again.

When I was a child, it always struck me that grownups looked so tired and wrinkly, and their hair was either gray or was going gray. I just didn’t understand then what it was that made them that way.

Thanks to experiences like misplacing my child in a refrigerator warehouse, I now know exactly why grownups look so haggard.