Bek’s comment on my last post reminded me of something I had apparently blocked out that happened on Sunday afternoon (the day before what happened on Monday afternoon… believe me, I could have this whole blog be devoted to stories like these, but I don’t necessarily want all these details to be remembered, and more importantly– I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we allow this stuff to take up any significant bulk of space in our life. We choose to focus on the positive for lots of really important reasons. So this little ‘series’ of stories is just that– a little series– and I refuse to let these things bog us, or our blog, down. Having said that, I’m on a roll here… so here goes with another little story from the day before yesterday).
We were at Lowe’s to buy birdseed and light bulbs and a couple of other things. Our trips to Lowe’s with the boys always involve their required stop in the lawnmower(summer)/snowblower(winter) section. It just so happens that Lowe’s was in the midst of their seasonal products turnover so K & O hit the jackpot– lawnmowers and snowblowers AND a bunch of big strong male Lowe’s employees driving those lift-machine-things back-and-forth from the stockroom to the lawnmower/snowblower area to bring out deck furniture and grills and other heavy stuff like that! K & O were in Lowe’s Heaven. They were both “riding” together on one riding lawnmower, sharing the seat, watching the action. From time to time the lift-machine-things would be away in the stockroom for a few minutes in a row and K & O would jump off their lawnmower to look down the aisle for it to come back. As soon as they’d see it they’d run like crazy to jump back onto their lawnmower-seat-safety-zone to watch the guys unload the heavy stuff. Braydon and I were about 3 feet from the lawnmower. We knew they were loving this, and we were in no rush, so we were letting them play it out. I was exhausted (remember, I’m 5 months pregnant!), so I was sitting down on a pile of wood (there was nowhere else to sit!) right next to the lawnmower. Braydon was standing right next to me. We were watching the boys, we were smiling that cheesy-parental-smiley-smile in our joy in watching their joy, and from time to time we were laughing at them (like when they’d make their super loud crazy engine sounds pretending to “START THE MOTOR!!!”). Strangely enough for a Sunday afternoon, we had virtually the entire store to ourselves. Nobody was around but us four. And the Lowe’s worker guys were all getting a big kick out of playing lift-machine-thing-driver-Superstars to K & O. Suddenly, out of nowhere a white woman appears. She’s clearly a customer. She’s been shopping in some nearby aisle but is now walking toward us with a very concerned look on her face. I notice her right away. I can see she’s looking at the boys, then she’s looking right at me (we’re making eye contact). She looks at the boys, then at me again. She does this a couple more times as she’s walking toward us. She walks right up to Owen and says, “Little boy, are you lost?” He looks up at her confused. She says it again, “Little boy, are you lost???” He doesn’t respond. He has a dazed look on his face. He turns to look up at me. I speak up as quickly as I can, looking over his head to the lady, “He’s with us!” She looks at me (for about the fifth time) and says, “I thought he was lost.” “No,” I said, “he’s our’s, he’s with us.” What I wish she had said was, “Oh, I am so sorry!!!” If she had I would have said, “No problem.” But instead she said, “Oh, I just saw him here and was worried he might be lost!” She turned and walked away and I let her walk off with the awkward silence.