“One of your children is missing,” the voice at the other end of the telephone said. My sleepy, half closed eyes read 3:00 Am on the clock. My son was a student living in a Columbia University dormitory. My daughter was in a dorm at Vassar College.
“Missing,!” I screamed!!!
I call these Bedtime Stories because they come either in the middle of the night when I am already asleep or shortly before 10:00 PM when I’m about to go to bed. When the subject is morbid, they are certain to keep me awake tossing and turning.
The most recent Bedtime Story was my daughter’s call to tell me my grandson Matthew had fallen while skiing with the entire family and had broken his arm in three places. But, she reminded me, not to tell the other grandmother since it would upset her. Hey!! What about this grandma hearing this Bedtime Story?
Another miserable Bedtime Story was a call many years ago that can still upset me. My son, as an undergraduate student at Columbia, proudly phoned me at about 10:00 PM to tell me and dad that he had just rappelled on a rope from the roof of his thirteen story dorm to the street below. Just what every parent wants to hear about her crazy son’s crazy sport!!
But back to the the phone call, “One of your children is missing.”
My college children were not missing!! But where was Portia? She was a delicious, chubby African American eight year old in my second grade class in P.S. 32 Queens. The police, at 3:00 AM were reporting that she had not come home from school and was still missing. They wanted to know when I had last seen her. Did I dismiss her with the class at 2:30 PM ? I don’t remember or I don’t want to remember how I actually answered that question since I had not dismissed my class that afternoon. Mrs. Hall, my colleague had done me the secret favor. I had never asked the school administration permission to leave fifteen minutes early. While being a classroom teacher, I was also an educational consultant for Sesame Street Magazine and I was scheduled to attend a meeting in the ASCAP building in Manhattan. The police reported to me they were currently going through my roll book, phoning all the children in my class.
A call to Howard’s house solved the mystery. Portia had gone home with Howard to play with his older sister. As a latchkey child It was more fun to stay at Howard’s, instead of returning to an empty house since Portia’s parents both worked. Howard’s mother reminded Portia to call home. In the era before answering machines and cell phones, Portia did indeed call but she failed to mention that she never reached her parents (because they were at work) and never informed them that she was staying overnight.
I’d much prefer stories like The Cat in the Hat, Caps For Sale or Good Night Moon. Please, spare me the other kind of Bedtime Stories.
Ethyl H.
May, 2020
Amazing how cell phones, the internet and zoom have changed our lives. A middle of the night call always leaves me shaken-, even when it is only a wrong number.
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