Jocie's Tale #1

 Jenny's got to be to the school by 8am (kids start at 8:37am), so, she darts out the door leaving me to finish getting the kids ready, feeding them breakfast, making 4 lunches, making sure backpacks get packed up, homework folders put together, etc.

Its school picture day, so, since we always want to tithe to my bruised ego as a photographer on these days by allowing me to setup my own studio for taking the kids pictures on those mornings so I can pretend I'm just as good as the school photographer, that means that I'm already distracted and running behind our rigid schedule.

That means its 8:20 and I've just started on doing that whole list above.

I get Joey and Jess out the door by 8:30 and promise I'll bring them their lunches.

Julie helps me with the remaining tasks around the kitchen and we load up and prepare to head to school.

Phone rings... It's Jessamyn telling me that I need to bring all 4 kids picture envelopes with money in them to school so we can pay to have the "real" photographer do their job of capturing that wonderfully awkward elementary school photo that'll haunt our first high school date's "meet the parents" moments for the next decades.

Ok, I can handle that... I think...

Get Julie, lunches, folders, a coat, picture envelopes, and myself into the car for the ride to school. I noticed Jocie's backpack, so, I grabbed that assuming that she must have gone with mom... or something.

9:00am (23 minutes late for school)

Get to school, go through the winding security process they've instituted to get from outside to inside and I'm finally walking Julie to class... if we can figure out which one she is in (its my first time in the school this year and my blessed "goldfish"-like memory can't recall her teacher's name).

We're wandering aimlessly when I notice Jocie's teacher's name on the wall and I quickly gaze in and find that they are lining up to go to a "special", so, they are all visible right there at the door.... but, there's no Jocie.

Ok, calm myself since I'm already running late with Julie tagging along by my side and need to get crisis #1 solved before digging into the next one.

Julie's class is right across the hall from Jocie. Julie figures this out and gives my kneecap its usual loving hug as she departs to join her class. "Bye daddy!"

I find Joey and drop off his lunch and photo form.

Jenny is teaching Jessamyn's class this morning, so, I run into them and give Jessamyn her lunch... but, she didn't want a lunch, she was eating school lunch, thats why Jenny put out only 3 lunch boxes (yet I was sure she'd made a mistake and so I made 4 lunches). No biggie here, I'll just eat Jess's lunch for her.

I've got Jess's homework folder, but no picture form, Jenny is nice enough to tell me.

Oh great... I tell her I'll go home and look for that. And in passing, I just casually mention that I've just figured out that I have no idea where Jocie is and that I'm working on that aspect too.

Quickly turn and head out before the shock-and-awe sets in on Jenny's face.... Fortunately, she's teaching class and can't do anything other that smile, look pretty, and hope that I'll be able to easily locate our chronically absent daughter.

Upon returning home, I run upstairs to see if Jocie's in her bedroom or bathroom. But, I can hear tears coming from our master bedroom.

I find Jenny's closet door is off its track and tilted in a nearly closed position with a little Jocie hand sticking through the apple-sized gap at the bottom.

"I've been crying up here for hours and nobody heard me" she pleads.

I'm smiling by this point because this is just perfectly Jocie.

I try to put the door back on its track: "I already tried that but it didn't work. I'm stuck in here forever. You might as well go get another daughter and forget about me."

Well, I succeed where she had failed with getting the door back on track and I'm rewarded with a hero's hug from a very red-faced and teary eyed 6 year old.

Upon asking her what happened, she informed me that she "had gone in there to play with her little light-operated bug catcher and I turned off the light and tried to close the door but it just fell off. I was ok at first and just played with the bug catcher, but then I got bored. So, I tried on mommy's shoes, but they don't really fit me, so, I started calling for anyone to come let me out, but no one came except Sony, but all she did was lick me."

In Jocie's retelling of the story she went back and forth between crying and playing until she found some headphones and decided to wiggle the cord around through the door hoping to get someones attention but then she got the notion that maybe everyone had turned into Zombies and that she was really safer not to wiggle the cord around and hide in the closet instead. Apparently this whole "zombified world" thought occupied her closet-based incarceration up to the time that I found her...