Josh has been attending Cub Scout Day Camp this week. It's down at Camp Pendleton (the marine base) which is really cool for the boys - they all get their shirts signed by the marines. However, it's a good 45 min drive without traffic, so we meet at the church in the morning and the boys all ride down and back home with the parents who are supervising that day.
Tuesday morning, I get to the church a good 10 mins early. I'm thinking I'm pretty good to be so prompt w/ 6 kids in tow and no husband in town. Then, I realize I forgot to put sunscreen on Josh and he forgot to grab his hat. No crisis - I borrowed sunscreen from a friend and she had an extra hat with her. So, I tell Josh to grab his lunch out of the van and get ready to go. No lunch! So, I round up all my kids (who of course couldn't have stayed in the van like I had told them to) and I tear out of the church parking lot to run home and get his lunch (and his hat). We made it back before they left (apparently I wasn't the only one running late). We got him packed into a Suburban w/ 4 other boys (made sure the mom knew about his inhaler) and they were off.
I thought I would be a nice mom and take the other kids to see the free movie that morning and had offered to take a couple friends with. We dashed home from the church again (not in quite as much of a hurry), made some popcorn, grabbed water bottles, picked up the friends and headed to the theatre. The kids were excited to see the Spiderwick Chronicles - Elise wanted to see the fairies. We got there and the theatre was full. There were a handful of single seats here and there, but no room for a mom with 7 kids in tow.
I was pleased that the kids handled the disappointment well and Brittney suggested we go home and watch Bedtime Stories. Everyone agreed and the kids had a great time at home with the movie and then playing wii afterwards.
I should have known that something else was going to go wrong. Things always seem to come in threes.
At about 3:45 when I was about to get the kids loaded into the van to pick Josh up from the church I got a call on my cell phone. "Hi, this is Mary Margaret over at Cub Day Camp. It seems Josh got left behind."
I'm thinking "WHAT?!?!?" How did my son get left behind? Of course, it's MY son who got left behind.
So, I called the woman who's car Josh was supposed to be in.
"Hi, this is Julie"
"Oh hi, we're on our way"
"Yeah, I know - Josh got left behind"
"WHAT?!?!?"
"Yeah, I'm assuming you're almost here?"
"We're about to get off the freeway"
"No worries, I'm going to go get him"
So, I load up my 5 kids to go pick Josh up from Camp Pendelton. I realize I'm almost out of gas, so I have to stop to get gas - otherwise I probably wouldn't have made it home. I could've gotten there, but not home - and the marine base is kinda isolated. So, by the time I get on the freeway it's about 4:30 and so I'm up against rush hour traffic.
Everything turned out fine. There were plenty of people at the camp still - the camp director and other leaders had a meeting and there were even a few cubs whose packs hadn't left yet. Plus, Josh got to make a couple extra boats while he was waiting for me.
What happened was that the 2 mom had counted the boys as they got out to the cars. Before they got into the cars, Josh realized he'd forgotten his lunch box. He went to get his lunch box from the cooler and when he turned around - they had gone. Apparently, no one realized he had gone back and no one realized he didn't get in the car. The boys were all goofing off in the car and the mom didn't even look back at the boys until I called her cellphone to let her know Josh had been left behind. He found Mary Margaret and together they looked for his group to make sure that they had, in fact left - thus the delay in my receiving a call.
Lessons learned -
count kids inside the car
tell someone before you leave the group
For me, yesterday brought the true "lesson learned". The other mom who was over our pack on Tuesday (who's car he didn't ride down in) pulled me aside at drop off in the morning to apologize for what happened and make sure everything was ok. She said how impressed she was that I wasn't more angry and that Josh was going back to camp. I told her that I thought about it and I had no real reason to be angry and to carry that around. It could've happened to anyone and he was safe and everything turned out fine. Last night, she stopped by the house unexpectedly. She brought a plate of chocolate chip cookies for Josh and a card for him and one for me. Apparently, I made quite the impression on her by how I handled the whole situation. It made me think how we can have a big influence on people without realizing it. I didn't respond the way I did because I was trying to be a good example to anyone. I just knew that for me, there was no reason to carry around bitter feelings about something that was simply an accident. It could have been any of the boys and it could have happened on any of the days with any of the parents. It could happen to me. I guess I was just surprised that it was that big of a deal to someone else. We really never know what will leave an impression on others.
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