THE WINCO STORY

I posted the following on Facebook the other day.

Today a stranger came to my door and asked if the little girl outside was mine. Deja vu. She wasn't and I'm the one who called the police. The story had a happy (and familiar) ending, so I guess the WinCo story has come full circle. In fact, when I told Tim and the bigs about it this evening, the first thing Silas asked, with a smirk on his face, was if she was going to WinCo. 

While many people know the story and it still gets brought up by one person or another every few months, there were some people who weren't familiar with it. So, here it is. 

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Once upon a time ....

Tim was at work. Naomi was three or four weeks old and I was nursing her. Silas and Devon were five and three years old and were playing in our fenced back yard. I had checked on them about five minutes earlier, just before feeding Naomi, when there was a knock at the door. 

Our living room had one wall that was a huge window facing our driveway, but it was about a gazillion degrees that day and the sun was beating down on that side of the house ... so I had the blinds closed and the living room was pretty dark. 

I owned plenty of clothes, but my post-partum self could only fit into a couple pairs of regular pants and I saved them for days I needed to leave the house ... so I was still in jammies mid-day. 

I had a happy newborn, but she wasn't thrilled with being set down in the middle of nursing for me to answer the knock ... so she was screaming bloody murder when I opened the door.

In other words, I looked like a slob mom with a neglected baby in a cave of a house.

A woman I'd never seen before was standing on my steps. "Are these your boys?" She glances to her right, but there are no boys there. Perplexed, I tell her my boys are in our back yard. In fact, I hear my boys come in the back door right then. Over the sound of a screaming baby, of course.

Silas and Devon walk into the living room and the woman says they are the boys she's talking about.

Time out. 

I didn't mention that while I was talking to her I noticed another woman parked behind her in front of our yard, watching us and talking on her phone. And I didn't mention that we lived on a corner and the guy across the side street, who never hangs out in his yard, was watching us and talking on his phone. Seemed odd.

Ok, back to the story. She says my boys are the boys she was asking about. Then she says they were way down the street. I tell her again, politely, that they were in the back yard. And I go pick up Naomi, who is still quite unhappy. Then I turn to the boys and ask them if they were in the back yard so that this stranger will see that I'm telling the truth. 

"No." 

No?!

"Where were you?"

"We walked to WinCo."

What?! WinCo is about a quarter mile away and across a busy street, a store I walk to with all the kids on a regular basis.

I explain to the lady, who is both courteous and obviously concerned, that I'd just checked on them a few minutes earlier. She tells me that they were quite far from the house and that I need to keep a better eye on them. She's not rude about it. And she's right. Obviously, because my kids were way down the road and I had no clue.

I thank her for making sure they got home safely and assure her that we will be dealing with the situation. She leaves. 

I tell Silas and Devon to sit on the couch while I get Naomi back to nursing, then ask them to explain what just happened. 

Evidently Devon decided he wanted gum. I can't remember now if they'd already asked and I'd said no or if they just assumed I wouldn't give them any. Either way, he figured he'd just get some of his own, shimmied up the fence, unlocked the gate, and started walking. Silas knew Devon was too young to walk on his own and didn't think there was time to tell me, so he just went with him. Safety in numbers, right? 

Eventually the woman who came to my door saw them, realized they were totally alone, and pulled over. She asked where their mom was and they said at home. She asked where home was and they pointed down the road behind them. She said they needed to get back to their mom and to start walking home. They obeyed and she followed them in her car. Brilliant, by the way, because it kept them safe from others without putting them in a position of being asked to get in a (totally safe) stranger's car. 

So, now there's a five and three year old walking down the road alone. There's a car following them. I'm sure that didn't look suspicious! I'm assuming the woman in the second car, who I never interacted with, saw that little parade, followed to make sure the first woman wasn't a creep, and called the police. I'm also assuming the guy across the street saw the now bigger parade and called the police.

I talk to the boys about never leaving our yard without permission. Barring unsafe people crossing their path, I actually think they could have made it to WinCo just fine because we walked there so often. The checkers knew us and it all would have worked out fine, but five and three year olds obviously shouldn't do that. 

I talk to them about shopping. They didn't have money with them, just hadn't thought that far ahead.  

I talk to them about always getting an adult when there's a problem, even if that means the other person may keep doing the wrong or unsafe thing for a little while.

I talk to them about being deceitful. That's the thing that hacked me off more than anything. To sneak something behind my back when they knew I hadn't or wouldn't have approved was a big problem. 

I'm equally upset with both of them, little partners in crime.

Naps came around and I sent everyone to bed, myself included. I had a baby who was still waking during the night to eat and I just wanted sleep. So I slept. Until someone started knocking on my front door, which was on the other side of my bedroom wall. Groggy, and knowing who it would be, I started coming to the door. Another knock, firmer and with something said, though I couldn't make out the words.

"Hello, officer." We lived in an unincorporated part of our town, so someone from the sheriff's department was at my door. My living room was still like a cave. I was still in jammies. No babies were screaming this time, but now I had bedhead.

"Do you know why I'm here?"  He's smiling, friendly. 

I tell him I'm assuming it's because my five and three year old went for a walk earlier in the day. He confirms that and we chat for a couple minutes about what happened and the importance of preventing it from happening again. I don't mind that he came. Judging from the audience out my door earlier in the day, it appears they got multiple calls about my boys and he's just doing his job. As he should, because five and three year olds shouldn't just wander around town without their parents' knowledge and sometimes the fact that they do is a sign of some major problems at home.

He leaves. 

And we all lived happily ever after. The end.

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People ask me if I was scared, but I wasn't. If I had walked in the back yard and seen the open gate swaying in the breeze with no kids to be found, then my heart rate would have certainly gone up. As it was, I didn't know my kids were gone until they were back. 

The positive spin is that we've provided our friends with something to laugh at for over seven years now. They love making little comments about WinCo and/or gum ... as does our family. On Saturday the silver lining was that I was able to tell a mom who was distraught, who didn't know where her toddler was, that I've had kids take off without my knowledge. I got to tell her that it happens to lots of people, just like my friends did when it happened to me and they all shared their stories of little escapees in their families.