Missing: Parents!

I experienced something odd this weekend. I felt like a parent. I came home on Friday evening to find my parents' phone number on my caller ID. I saw that they called at 4pm. It was 6pm. So I called and got their machine. Left a message, went about my business.

Saturday arrives. At around 2pm I realized that they had not called me back. They always call me back. And if they're going out of town they always let me know. But, no big deal. I went about my way and thought nothing of it.

Sunday arrives. I'm checking my email and there's an email from my uncle. FROM POLAND. He says that he hasn't heard back from my parents in a while and that he wanted to make sure that everything was OK. Well, maybe I'll call my Dad on his cell phone. Maybe they're out of town. Got voicemail. Left a message. 3 hours later no call back. I do the same thing with my Mom's cell phone. Also no call back.

So I called my brother. Unlike me, living 1,600 miles from them, he lives 6 miles away. He had no idea where they were but told me that he would stop by their place after work to make sure everything was OK. That put all sorts of scary thoughts in my head. Now I kept thinking that this is what they must have been going through when I would stay out waaayyy past my curfew on weekends and the horrible images that enetered their minds. All while I was smoking pot & making out with some boy.

Finally, at 9pm on Sunday night my Dad calls. "Oh did we forget to tell you? We went to Palm Springs for the weekend. We had such a great time. We drank 3 bottles of wine, some port....." And on it went.

My gut told me to tell him all of the horrible things that I had imagined that day, the unimaginable things that popped into my head. But I remembered how that made me feel when the roles were reversed. It did nothing. It was just their way of venting at me and made no difference in the situation. So I decided to relax in the fact that everything was OK. I hope I'm this smart when/if I have a kid.

1 comment:

The Unprocessed Project said...

I always seem to think the worst when something like that happens. I would never think "Oh maybe they decided to go to Palm Springs for the weekend" No, I would think that my brother was going to walk in on a horrible, bloody massacre and it would be all over the nightly news. Glad to know someone else is irrational like me. And gald the folks are ok.