Halloween

Okay, so I totally lost Nathan while it was my turn to have the kids out trick or treating on Halloween. To be fair though, he wandered away from ME, it's not like I neglected to remember his existence.

Here's the scoop. The kids were getting tired. We did the last loop around our neighborhood until after dinner and we were directly behind our backyard and across the street. There were 5 dudes drinking beer next to a bonfire (yes, in the front yard, I swear some of our neighbors are the biggest hillbillies), with the candy bucket next to the fire. Boys went up, grabbed candy, went to the end of the driveway to talk to other trick or treaters. Maddie, however, decided to sit in the middle of the driveway, where one of the drunkards put the entire bucket in front of her so she could choose what she wanted. As I turned my back on the boys to pick her up and take her home (how long does that take--3, maybe 4 seconds?) Nate must've made his great escape. I panicked when I realized he was gone.

Very quickly, I ran thru the yards and took Jack and Mads home where John of course had been hearing my screaming "NNNNNNNAAAAAAATTTTTTTEEEEE!" and was quite livid with me. I booked back out and ran south, asking others if they'd seen "Peter Pan" (even though the drunks all thought he was Robin Hood), and some other mommy's joined in my frenzy. "How old is he?" One asked. "TWO!" I yelled back, and she went "Oh Jesus...NATE!". Thank God I'm somewhat in shape and was able to run quickly. But running South didn't work.

I kept thinking in the back of my head, "No cars went by, that's good. But that's not to say he didn't go into someone's house and get kidnapped that way!"

Fortunately, this story has a good ending, but I really could've killed the kid. He was about 4 houses North of the bonfire house...stealing candy from another kids bucket. It wasn't even good candy, it was crappy now and laters or something like that.

It just proves that even the most vigilant, observant, caring, loving parents want to kill their children when they pull a stunt like that. Even more importantly it can happen to anybody, and that's what was scary.