A couple of nights ago, a friend called Marcus and invited him and the boys for a play date at the Bass Pro Shop (where they optimistically believed that the four little boys would enjoy looking at guns and compound bows as much as they did). While they were gone, I took advantage of the couple of hours alone to tackle some cleaning and make a big stock-up trip to the grocery store. I got home from the store just in time to get dinner started before Marcus and the boys got home. Caleb rushed in the house first, with Marcus and a whiney Ethan right behind him. I turned away from my cooking to greet Caleb and ask if he had a good time, and this was the very first thing out of his mouth:
"Ethan got lost in the store, but I found him." I raised my eyebrows and looked at Marcus, more than a little eager to hear that story!
Apparently, Ethan had darted down an aisle away from Marcus and turned at the end. Marcus didn't follow immediately, assuming that Ethan would go around the corner and come back. When he didn't, and couldn't be seen in either direction at the end of the aisle, a high-energy search ensued. During the first minute, Tim's five-year-old son stopped a Bass Pro Shop employee and said, "Ethan is lost!" (Marcus had already spoken with another employee and had a Code Adam broadcast.) Soon everybody around was looking for a 2-year-old boy. Marcus was a little uncertain (i.e. evasive) as to how long the whole search took, but Caleb estimated it to be "about 30 minutes." (In a defensive counter of Caleb's exaggerated figure, Marcus said it was probably about 5 minutes.) Regardless of the actual amount of time, it was long enough to raise Marcus's ever-steady heart rate a few notches.
The search came to an end when Caleb pointed to a clothes rack about ten feet from Ethan's original departure point and said, "I think Ethan is hiding in there." Sure enough, Ethan was standing on the base of the circular clothes rack, even his feet invisible to the observer. He couldn't be seen until an employee moved the clothes to the side and he poked his head out. Marcus was looking elsewhere at the time, and was immensely relieved to hear an employee say that Ethan had been found. He immediately made his way back to Tim and all four boys. Ethan's pants were wet, so we think he probably wet himself and then ran off and hid because he didn't want to get in trouble.
Later on, Marcus asked Caleb what made him think that Ethan was in the clothes rack. He said something like, "I just thought that Ethan would like to hide in there." I guess he knows his brother pretty well :)
No comments:
Post a Comment