Deep End of the Ski Slope

They say you have three kids so that any one can be expendable.  Well, based on the incredulous reactions I get from others whenever I say that in front of my kids, I think I actually might be the only one who says that.  But my bluff was called yesterday.  I lost Guinness, or rather, he lost me, when we were standing less than 15 feet away from each other.

I was picking up the kids from ski school yesterday afternoon and was directed to a nearby station where they were selling class pictures.  Cayman was walking right next to me, and I thought Guinness was on the other side of her, but it was really just another kid in red.  Red, as it turns out, is really popular in ski wear.  Next year, I just might dress the kids in a slightly less popular color like puce.  

The place was teeming with kids, parents, and instructors, so I wasn't worried at first.  He isn't the type to wander off by himself, and he was carrying his skis, so he couldn't have gotten far anyway.  But as time passed, the crowd started to thin out out, and there were fewer kids, parents and instructors, and more scary, bearded, sketchy looking people.  I wouldn't say that I started to freak out, but at times like these, your mind inevitably replays every child abduction movie and show you've ever seen.  Ransom, Deep End of the Ocean, Without a Trace.... 

Michael had been with Ellington, bringing the car around.  I was hoping Guinness had some how bumped into him and was waiting in the car.  No such luck.  So we left Cayman and Ellington in the car (with responsible adults!  We were down one, so they weren't expendable anymore), and spread our search out into the rest of Whistler Village.

By now, the scenes were flashing through my mind like lightning.  There is always that moment of irony when the parent passes right by the child, so I started memorizing things just in case.  That guy with the van with the tinted windows shut the door right as I was approaching?  He looked a little sketchy, so I gave him the gimlet eye so he knew I was onto him and took careful note of his license plate number.  I saw an adult holding hands with a child wearing a red ski jacket and started speeding up to catch them.  Realized that it would take more than 10 minutes to bleach Guinness' black hair blond and slowed down.  Wig!  And sped up again.  

At one point, I checked my phone to see if Michael had texted me that he found Guinness.  It was 4:44 pm.   Holy crap, I didn't need to see that!  (As many of you know, the number 4 is considered unlucky in Chinese because it sounds like the word for "death").  I started to wonder when we should involve the police.  Luckily, I had in my hands a photo that was just taken of him that morning - the darn cause for my losing him in the first place!  I could already read the newspaper headlines, "Child Abducted from Whistler Ski School, Mom Busy Shopping", and was just about ready to prepare my grieving mother's plead, when I got Michael's call that he found Guinness.  

As it turns out, Guinness had dropped his skis just as we set off to the photo station.  When he looked up, Cayman and I were gone.  I can just imagine how the noise seemed to get louder for him and the crowds and colors started to swirl around him as he spun around looking for me.  Well, that's how it goes in the movies.  He waited about one minute and then told an instructor that he was lost and was taken to the ski school office where they texted Michael and then waited and waited and waited for him to check his phone.  And once Michael found Guinness, he took another five minutes comforting Guinness and bringing him to the car before he called me.  All told, Guinness was "lost" from me for just under an hour.

Lessons learned:

-Make sure your children have memorized your cell phone number (which Guinness has), and then check your phone regularly in case someone actually tries to contact you.  Unless you know it is near 4:44, in which case you should wait a couple extra minutes between your phone checks.

-If you are picking your kids up from a school or an organized activity, check the main office first, as that is generally the "lost and found" station for both kids and inanimate objects.

-Once you have found your child, let him cry an extra minute or two while you notify the other parent who is frantically searching for the child and spare her from falsely accusing sketching looking men with dark tinted vans.

-Dark vans with tinted windows should be avoided if you don't want to look like a sketchy child abductor.