Alone in the Dark

After a nice family night dinner at Joe Bandido's in Springville, our family went to a local park with some neighbor friends to play some frisbee.  Playing frisbee is a family pastime of ours and we use nothing but the best....the Aerobie Pro!  We have 2 of them (an orange and yellow one) and these little suckers can fly! Because of how far they fly, we can only use them at  football fields or similar sized large parks.  As it was getting dark, we started to pack up the cars to head home.  Coleman made one last throw and it was a beauty (about 40 yards long), but nobody was around to catch it so he took off running to get it.  A few minutes later we headed home.

About 10 minutes after getting home (around 9:15pm), I got a call on my cell phone and this is kinda how things next transpired......In a somewhat shaky voice I hear, "Dad, can you come get me?"  A little surprised and recognizing Coleman's voice I asked where he was. He said "up at the park."  After catching my breathe for a moment, I told him to wait by the little fishing pond and I would be up to get him in a minute.  The park is around 2-3 miles from our home, right next to the Spanish Oaks Golf Course.  When I arrived, he was standing with a young couple, who had kindly lent him their cell phone so he could call me.

While I initially wanted to blame Rylee for leaving him (as most the kids had jumped in her car), the blame falls with his parents as neither of us did any kind of headcount.  During the early years of our marriage, we were always good at keeping track of our children, but as they have grown older, it's gotten easy to assume they do what's expected of them and are where they are expected to be at.

Evidently, Coleman wandered around for a bit but couldn't find the frisbee.  He kept looking for it and watched as everyone drove off.  He was too far away for us to hear him yell or try and catch us.  He claims he went back and looked for the frisbee a little longer until the sprinklers came on.  He met a couple and told them what happened and asked to use their phone to call home.  After I arrived, I shined my car lights across the field and the 2 of us looked for the frisbee in the dark for about 15 minutes, all the while getting sprayed by the sprinklers.  Knowing that our family loves that frisbee and not wanting to lose it, he asked how much a new frisbee would cost.  I told him about $15 and he told me he had $5 he could give me. I told him not to worry about it and that I could get another one.  When I told him it was time to give up our search and head home, he told me we couldn't because he had said a prayer and prayed that we would find it.   Since the 2 of us had combed the area around where the frisbee should have landed without finding it, I was skeptical we would find it but told him we could keeping looking a little longer.  Just as I was ready to give up again, I found it by just about stepping on it, which was the only way either one of us could have ever found it in the dark wet grass.  Walking back to the car he told me "I'm sure glad I said a prayer."  Even though we were both pretty wet after this little event, neither of us were cold, even on the convertible ride home.

The ups and downs of being parents...one minute you're disappointed at your child for their behavior (like several months ago when him and several other neighborhood children broke out the windows of a vacant home resulting in him going to juvenile court and completing 10 hours of community service), and the next moment, you can't believe you're so lucky to have such a cool kid and you're so proud of him for remaining strong even when it had to be hard and he had to be pretty dang scared being all alone at night.