That Time . . . The Boys Rescued a Toddler.

Hey! It’s been a while. Long story. And a story for another time. SO. I was going to write about something else, but then this happened, so I thought I’d tell you about it.

 

On Monday night, Connor got back from tennis. Yes, he’s driving. Yes, you’re old. Enough. So, I heard a vehicle and since Becky and Connor would be arriving about the same time, I went to see if they needed help. (Becky frequently has her workbag and other stuff; Connor has the fifty pounds of bricks he puts in his backpack along with his laptop, his tennis gear, etc.). For you Kyle fans, he was upstairs already. Before I got to the door, the doorbell starting ringing in quick succession. I stepped it up, thinking that meant that someone REALLY needed help.

I opened the door and there’s Connor with all his stuff. He said, “I need help.” As I opened the screen door, he stepped back and pointed. There was a small child (I guessed three, but we’d find out four) standing behind Connor. All the kid had on was Lightning McQueen underwear. Connor continued, “He’s trying to find his dad.”

I looked at the little guy and said, “Do you know your dad’s name?”

Connor said, “He said his name is [Redacted]”

The little boy said, “I need to find him” and started off around the big curve of the sidewalk in front of our house.  I told Connor to drop his stuff in the yard and stay with him. I take out my phone and start to follow at a short distance. This is for a couple of reasons: 1) I start looking for [Dad’s name] on the neighborhood Facebook page, 2) Connor is a trained babysitter (SafeSitter courses, etc) and really good with little kids, and 3) The world being what it is, it’s better if the parents happen along and find their kid with a bigger kid, because I honestly don’t know what the fuck is going on.

Connor follows the little guy, who is determined that his family is in the opposite direction that he arrived from, but Connor isn’t sure that the kid himself is sure. I take the obvious route and I use the combination of my former teacher/former soccer coach/fan of loud music voice to shout out the dad’s name. I get an answer from over by a U-Haul where a new family is moving into the neighborhood (which, honestly, would make sense for a kid to get away from), but it turns out he misheard the yell.

Apparently, I haven’t lost my METAL VOICE, as my yelling drew Kyle out. He came to see what was up, grabbed Connor’s stuff and took it inside, and then ran over to meet up with Connor and their now-mutual little companion. The kid walks them to a cul-de-sac. About this time, Mike, our neighbor that’s the president of the neighborhood association, has heard me too and come out. He, unfortunately, can’t recall anyone by that name, and Mike knows just about everybody. The boys and their Grogu come back from the cul-de-sac; that wasn’t right either. The cute part of this is that the small person had taken Connor’s hand to walk back. It’s obvious that he was starting to trust the boys, which is a) sweet, and b) fucking scary if he’d found the wrong person instead of Connor.

However, Connor wondered aloud if the fact that the little guy tried to go back that way, and had in fact come from that direction when Connor found him in the first place, could it be possible that he’s going the right way, just on the wrong street? I asked the little guy if he would let Connor walk him in the other direction. Little Guy wasn’t sure. He thought a completely different street might be the way. Mike said, “Why don’t you go that way with Connor, and if you don’t find him, the boys can walk you back?” Little Guy found this agreeable, and set off with Connor and Kyle in that direction.

At this point, still only a few minutes in, I was considering posting a lost child message on the Facebook group with minimal detail and my phone number (like Found: Lost Child. Call me at….). Because again, I’m not going to post a picture of the kid and say, “Found, this kid. If yours, pick up on curb.”

Having given the group a couple of houses head start, I follow. Connor and Kyle had to duck under some branches that hang low over the sidewalk. The little dude walks right under them. As Connor and Kyle have disappeared from view, I can still see the kid. Then, from the other side of the foliage, there’s a shouted name, and then the little dude comes running back toward me under the branches at full speed. Kyle bursts through after him, laughing. They had found the parents, all right, and they were PISSED. Little Dude, having made it home, apparently now thought the better part of valor was getting the unholy fuck back out of Dodge.

Kyle turned him around and I caught up to find a young mom and dad, as well as a great-grandfather. The parents were that kind of relieved angry that parents get. They had JUST realized that the kid had gotten out of the house and was gone when we showed up. They thanked us and whisked him inside. I talked to the great-grandfather for a few. Really nice guy; he was only on the relieved side. He confided in me that the little guy was a little bit of a four year-old tornado. I said, “Hey, at least he found a kid that knows how to babysit,” which the great-granddad found amusing.

I tell this story mainly as it’s sort of a good reminder. Kids are uncannily fast. They wander off, they pull stuff off of shelves, they play with strange animals, they lay under baby gates like an auto mechanic and disassemble them (maybe that was just 18 month-old Kyle), and they will, unfortunately, talk to anyone. Like I said, I’m just glad that the kid settled on Connor. With two big ponds in the neighborhood, a couple of hundred houses, and the unsettling knowledge that lots of bad people are out there, a four year-old by himself in his freaking underwear is incredibly vulnerable to harm. At least the prevailing image I have of the situation is that kid running away from the parents he was looking for because he just realized that he was in deep shit.