On the Sunday after New Year’s Eve, I was abundantly blessed by having 45 minutes to myself to run to the mall without my two little shadows. I had a couple of things to exchange, and a few gift certificates that were burning a hole in my wallet, and a very limited window of time, so I was on a very strategic mission. I had to park waaaaaay out in the Timbuktu parking lot, since the mall was sardine-packed with post-holiday shoppers and returners. As I lock my car and begin my trek, I notice out of the corner of my eye that the car that I parked next to has two small kids in it, and no parent in sight.

I briefly thought about minding my own business, especially since my kid-free time treasure was very limited. But, what if something happened, and I didn’t step in? What if it was one of those “What Would You Do” shows on Dateline, and I’m on camera just walking away flanked by my Victoria’s Secret shopping bags, putting yet another pair of overpriced flannel pajamas ahead of what could be a potentially dangerous situation? I had to do something, but what? I decided to nonchalantly sit in my car, where I could see the kids, to see if someone was close by- maybe it was a dad, and he was wandering around nearby with a Bluetooth in his ear, oblivious to how long he’d been on the phone organizing his Fantasy Baseball picks while his kids sat in the car within sight. I waited for ten minutes, no dad. Could it be a babysitter or older sister, who was two cars over making out with her much older and prohibited boyfriend while she was supposed to be “watching” the kids? I waited 15 more minutes- no babysitter or big sister.

This is how far from the store I was parked!

Several times, I thought to myself, “Am I overreacting?” Even though I don’t even leave my kids in the car to run up to hand cash to the attendant at the gas station, am I being overly worrisome about these kids locked in a car in a mall parking lot for a half hour? I decided that I was not overreacting, the kids looked only to be seven and nine, or younger. I needed to do something. I decided to call the mall security office, to tell them the situation, and they can take over from there.

I sat for about ten more minutes waiting for the white truck with the flashing orange lights to pull up, still no parent or anyone to claim these two kids, who are now starting to get restless, and are climbing all over the inside of the car. I was starting to become very irritated and thinking that maybe I should have just kept to myself, when zooming down the aisle of the parking lot is a mall cop on his Segway, wearing a bright orange safety vest. In a very “Here I come to save the daaaaaaay!” fashion, he parked his scooter behind the car with the kids, staunchly dismounted, hiked up his pants, and walked up to the car window. “I need for you kids to unlock this car,” he demanded. The kids just stared at him, and the older boy shook his head no. “I am an officer of the law, and I need you to unlock this window NOW.” He said sternly, and I was hoping he couldn’t hear me snickering from the car next to them. The little boy complied, and unlocked the door for the “officer”, who then asked him how old they were. “Seven and nine? Well that’s a little young to be all by yourself out here,” he stated. “Where is your mommy or daddy?”, he asked the older child. The little one quipped up, “She’s at Macy’s!” And the mall cop got on his radio, and started barking orders to the other mall cops to track down the missing mother, who apparently thought that a locked Toyota Prius at the back of a parking lot was sufficient enough supervision for her kids while she was returning whatever her husband bought her for Christmas.

I could only imagine the scene inside of Macy’s, as they announced on the loudspeaker, “Will the owner of a blue 2010 Toyota Prius, parked in lot C40 with two little kids locked in it please come to Customer Service, and we will be glad to remove your head from your ass?!” It probably didn’t go exactly like that, but you get the idea. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be present when the idiotic mother arrived, thinking that the mall cop could probably handle it from here. I did, however slip him my business card, and asked him to call my cell if he had any questions, or at least to update me on the situation. I never heard from the mall cop, and since I had run out of my own kid-free time, and it hadn’t occurred to me to just bring my kids, and lock them in my car in the parking lot while I was shopping, I had to head back home without finding out what transpired when the mom arrived.

I watched the news that night, to see if a mom was arrested for leaving her kids in a parked car while she was trying on 75% off Not Your Daughter’s Jeans skinny jeans in the Young Misses department. No news story. I’ve also been watching “Caught On Camera” to see if they air my heroic actions, they haven’t yet. I never did hear from my Segway Superhero, either. All I know at the end of the day, is that I did the right thing. I intervened in what I believe was a dangerous situation for those kids. If it were you, what would you have done? Would you wait for the mom to return, or would you have walked away to mind your own business? What age is too young to lock your kids in the car in a parking lot for 45 minutes? I can’t wait to hear your thoughts and opinions!

I am writing today in the form of a public service announcement: Do NOT volunteer to go on the bus for your Kindergartener’s pumpkin patch field trip. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I wasn’t warned, and I came unprepared, willing, vulnerable, and offered my supervisory services at my own will. And here I am, two weeks later, still shaken by the whole experience, and have yet to lower my Prozac prescription to it’s normal level. This is my story:

Let’s rewind for a moment, and go back to the blissful, colorful days that were the beginning of my youngest child’s first year of school. Since cutting back on my work schedule, I had devoted myself to being a more “involved” parent, and I signed up for everything. :Sure, I’ll work in both kids classrooms! Yes to being the basket-putter-togetherer for the school auction! Yes to PTA meetings! Yes to volunteering to chaperone the Girl Scouts to the fire station” (they didn’t have to twist my arm too hard on that one)! I had become a yes-to-everything parent, and was gleefully excited when I volunteered to chaperone for my son’s first field trip, and ecstatic when I found out that I got to ride with him and the other Kindergarteners on the school bus. I had visions of sitting next to my little guy, my arm around him, in our matching “Cougar” t-shirts (I’m not making that up- that really is his school mascot, and we really do have matching t-shirts with the word emblazoned across the front of them), and singing the “the Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round!” in chorus with all of the other little people and teachers on the way to the cheery, lovely pumpkin patch!

That couldn’t be further from what really happened. I walked into the classroom, bursting with pride and excitement, ready to mark this milestone in my son’s scholarly experience, and I’m handed a list of the children that I would be responsible for, for the remainder of the field trip. Now, every class has a few kids that a teacher would politely describe as “oh, Johnny, he’s a little bit of a handful….” as the child runs screaming at the top of their lungs like a banshee leaving behind a whirlwind of destruction. On my list, was my own kid, and every single one of these kids. With a sigh, I told myself- “you GOT this, Girl! You are supermom! You can handle this- no sweat!” And I wrangled all of my kids to the bus, got them on, got them buckled, and thought I had it all together, and off we went.

Two minutes into the bus ride, (there were over 70 Kindergarteners- the noise was deafening!), the little girls that I was sitting next to, start chanting at the top off their screechy little voices, “Fas-TER! Fas-TER!” to the bus driver, at the front of the bus. “After 13 girls started chanting in unison around me, and their high-pitched voices are bouncing off the walls of the metal bus and reverberating into my skull, I politely whispered in my most “nice teacher” voice to the little girl next to me, “Friend, we want the bus driver to be able to concentrate, so let’s not be too loud, okay? Thank you for being a good listener.” The little girl pushed up in her seat, so that she was nearly eye-level with me, and right in front of my face, while looking me square in the eye, she yelled, “FAS-TER!” as loud as her little voice could muster. This started a chain reaction of all of the kids in my whole back section of the bus shrieking in a louder, higher tone, “FAS-TER! FAS-TER!” Taken aback, I puzzled- maybe I’m out of the loop or overreacting, and I certainly don’t want to be the “mean mommy that came on the field trip”.  So, I suck it up, and practice some zen breathing for the remainder of the ride to the farm, while 16 little kids around me yell-chant for the driver to go “fas-TER!”

When we got there, as soon as we got off the bus, all five of my little boys were off and running in five different directions. Mind you, this is not a pumpkin patch at a field with nice little rows of pumpkins, this is at an actual farm, with farm animals, farm equipment, drainage ditches, irrigation ditches, a running creek, barbed-wire fences, and a corn maze. They might as well have called it the “pumpkin and every possible type of predicament that you read about happening to kids, like getting fingers chopped off by moving farm equipment or falling into a running creek or getting lost in a huge field of corn and starring in a terrifying Stephen King movie about bratty, undisciplined children patch”. Once I managed to corral all of my little boys again, we all sat together to hear a song about dirt, and learn about how to carry a pumpkin correctly, so that you don’t fall and trip and the stem of the pumpkin stabs you in the chest, piercing your aorta, or your friend’s (true safety demonstration performed by one of the workers at the farm).

Then it was time for all of the little ones to go off to find their pumpkins. As all of the other parents and their little charges traveled in perfect little groups to choose their perfect pumpkin, my five hellions scattered everywhere. One was hiding in a drainage ditch behind a barbed-wire fence, two ran into the corn maze, one ran toward the animals, and one ran off to find his mother, who was also there, but not chaperoning or on the bus (clearly, someone had forewarned her). After a complete rigmarole of getting my group together, choosing their pumpkins, and getting them back onto the bus, I had yelled for them so many times, that by this time my voice resembled Kate Winslet’s at the end of  ”Titanic”, when she’s trying to be rescued and she’s the only survivor on a door floating in the ocean, and croaking out the words “Come back, Come back”, but no actual voice is coming out because she’s so hoarse. That was me. Only in my case, no one was coming to my rescue.

I plopped onto the bus, after I strapped all of my little kids in their seats, and did a quick glance to make sure I was no where near the chanting little girls from the earlier trip. As the teacher reads “roll” to make sure that all of the kids are present, and not being trapped in a corn silo, or hiding in a well somewhere, I sit back in my seat, and I draw in a deep cleansing breath. Right as I start to exhale, I hear the two boys in the seat behind me start to pick at eachother. I crane myself over the back of my seat, pinching a nerve in my neck, and warn the boys to keep their hands to themselves, or they will be in trouble when we get back to school, and before I could finish the sentence, one of them looked at me with a sneer, and kicked the back of my seat, and he kicked it hard. Dumb move on his part, as I saw him grimace, and feel for his new bruise, and I said in my “nice-teacher voice”, “Oh, Friend, we’re not supposed to kick things, that’s not best behavior,” and turned back around in my seat, with a little smirk, thinking to myself, “Haha- that’s what he gets”. Next thing I know, the kicking kid starts wailing, “IIIIIIIII waaaaaaaaaaaaaaant my mooooommmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!” “Waaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” “Mooooommmmmmmmyyyyyy!” As loud as he possibly can, right into the back of my head and into my ears and my brain. It wasn’t just crying, it was the piercing kind of whining that a kid that is throwing a tantrum does to cajole his parents into giving into what he wants, and they give in just for the sake of their own sanity. That doesn’t work in my house, but that’s a whole ‘nother Oprah. So for precisely 37 minutes, and 42 seconds, I was trapped in a moving metal tube, surrounded by seventy 6-year-olds, and a kid screeching in my ear and kicking the back of my seat. I can’t tell you the name of the bottle of wine that I single-handedly finished that night, or how many ibuprofen I took to quell the pounding in my head, but I can tell you that although I continue my servitude in the Kindergarten classroom, I will never again volunteer to be on the bus.

Yay! School starts for my kids in 2 weeks, one day, seven hours and 46 minutes!!!! Unlike a lot of my counterparts in our rather affluent area of residence, I have not had the privilege of having my kids in any type of summer program this year. I even entertained the thought of pretending that I was religious, maybe Catholic or Jewish-  just for a week, if it meant that my kids could go to free vacation bible school and give me a flippin’ break for a few hours. But, I bit the bullet, entertained, refereed and wrangled my kids for an entire summer, and lived to tell about it. We did have some really fun days, like the two days we went swimming at my girlfriends house, or the day we went to San Francisco and walked all over the city. We also did cool stuff like play on the trampoline in the backyard, and go on bike rides. I worked very hard on being “present”, and also at not screaming, “stop pestering your brother/sister!” at the top of my lungs, five times a day.

One day, at the grocery store, I overheard two women talking. Neither had one kid trying to hang from the door handle in the freezer aisle, while the other kid was precariously reaching for crazy straws and about to knock the whole shopping cart over, like my two kids were. They were carefree and kid-free, meandering aimlessly, and very trophy-wifely around the store. The perfectly coiffed and svelte blonde lady said to the chic-even-in-yoga-pants-still-perfectly-made-up-even-after-the-gym brunette lady, “I am SO ready for school to start! Between Sophia’s ballet camp, princess camp, math enrichment camp and get-ready-for-preschool camp, and Maddie’s little genius camp, gymnastics camp, and after-school-even-when-there-is-no-school-club, I am just so tired of my kids!” The brunette lady retorted, “RII-IGHT??? I totally understand what you’re going through! After we summer’ed in St. Thomas for three weeks, on the weekend of the last week, our nanny had to visit her family in Mexico, and we had to deal with our kids for two whole days THEN the entire flight home! Can you imagine? The nerve of her…” “Tsk…tsk…tsk”, the blonde lady answered as she shook her head in disbelief. I literally stood there, with my kids wrecking shop in the grocery store, and my mouth completely agape.

If you can afford to have your kids in all-day camps every day for three months, “summer” in St. Thomas with a nanny, spend your days getting your hair done, doing Zumba, tanning, getting mani-pedi’s, going to luncheons, and having your ass waxed, more power to you. In fact a small part of me is green with envy, okay, I am totally Gumby-green, I am so jealous. But, at the end of the summer, I can take a deep breath, march my kids to their first day of school, and walk back to my empty car with the satisfaction of  knowing that the three of us- we created memories, Man! We survived summer, we conquered the long, hot days, and my kids are still alive after three months of fighting with each other and whining to me that they’re bored. I have new badges to add to my ” mother-stripes” on my lapel. I should win some type of award for surviving a summer with no break from my 5 and 7 year old.

In fact, I have decided that I am grateful for my last summer with my crazy kids, before my little one goes to Kindergarten, and my oldest goes to 2nd grade. Yes, there were days I ripped my hair out (literally), tears were shed, wine was poured, and a Prozac prescription was filled, but my kids will always have the memories that we made this summer. I wouldn’t trade it to be either of the ladies at the grocery store… well, maybe just for one day.