November 24, 2004
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Ok…I’ll be the first to admit it…I’m officially “loosing it.”
My son Jordan came home from Baylor tonight/this morning for Thanksgiving break. I called him about 8:30 last night to see where he was in his travels and he told me that he and LaRae were just about to cross the state line into Oklahoma, but that progress was slow because he was driving through a hard storm. I quess that was on my mind when I went to sleep because I dreamed that I got a call from the highway patrol that he had been in an accident. I bolted awake from this dream about 3:00 a.m. and went to check his room to see if he had made it home yet. When he wasn’t there I went into parental anxiety attack mode.
Let me explain that this is not a rational state of mind. Jordan is the singularly most responsible person on the face of the earth. I’ve never had to worry about him because he always does exactly what he says he’s going to do, period, end of sentence. I went back to bed and laid there for about 30 minutes and realized that there was no way I was going back to sleep. I got to thinking “If he and LaRae had not made it to LaRae’s by now, I surely would have heard from her parents.” but then the next thought was, “but what if he fell asleep at the wheel on the way back from LaRae’s?” My first thought was to simply call him on his cell and find out where he was, but then I figured that what probably happend was that he decided he was too sleepy to drive back from LaRae’s and crashed there. I didn’t want to wake him up by calling him if that was the case. I knew I was not going to recover from parental anxiety mode until I knew he was safe so I determined that the only logical course of action was to drive to LaRae’s at 3:30 in the morning to make sure his car was there. On the way there I saw him driving the other direction on his way to the house. I pulled into the driveway about two minutes behind him. When I walked in he had this incredulous look on his face. When I explain what I had done he gave me a look that clearly said “It’s apparent that I’m going to have to put you in the home sooner than I expected.”
If any of Jordan’s friends are reading this you will probably write it off as typical wacky parental unit behavior. But let me tell you, you will never understand it until you become a parent.
When I’m worried about his safety now its no different than it was when he was seven and had to be hospitalized, even though he’s 21 and an adult. I’m certain it will be no different when he is 50 and I’m 75 (assuming I live that long).
Trust me, when you have children you’ll understand. If you want to talk about it, call me at the home.
Comments (2)
I called him around 3:15 to see if he was still out with the boys. If I had known you were up I would’ve given you a call!
I wouldn’t worry too much – I work for a summer leadership camp based in DC and I’ve had all sorts of zany parent calls ranging from a mother asking me how I knew our bus drivers weren’t “the terrorists” to a dad who made me pull a student off of a ready-to-depart bus to speak to him on the phone because the student we knew to be on the bus might be only masquerading as his son. In the absence of information, the imagination sure goes to work. I’ve learned to accept that parents are nuts, and one day I shall be just as crazy.