All I Want For Christmas...A Christmas Horror Story

I can picture you all, with your December plans. You're baking and wrapping and decking the halls, aren't you? You're shopping and caroling and do-gooding to heart's content...and then some - I know you...that's how the lot of you work!
I'm right there with you.
Except for the shopping.
I was pretty much done with that Thanksgiving weekend.
I do have a few things to get, but I know what I'm getting, and we're waiting for the specials.
Cell phones.
For the kids.
Yes, the poor little kiddies - you know the ones - the only teenages on the planet who don't own phones?
The ones who think they aren't receiving phones until they get a job and can pay for the plan themselves?
We were going to wait until they had their licenses...
But, Aaron has "Behind the Wheel" next semester (and I need a place where I can get valium...quick!) Just joking...
But, after this week I am really ready for them to get their Christmas gifts.
This is no longer a selfless act.
This is for ME.

You see, Monday I found myself where I never would have guessed I would have been in a million years.
At the high school.
In the office.
With Officer What's His Name.
Looking at their surveillance camera tapes...trying to pick my son out of a million kids walking down the hall and out the doors.
There are over 460 kids in his grade alone...over 1700 in his school.
Try to remember what your high schooler wore this morning.
Try to pick him out of a sea of other boys that look pretty much the same.
And try not to imagine the worst.
This was a mother's nightmare.

Let me backtrack...
Aaron is my hyper-responsible one.
Well - both my kids are.
They're both A-students. They both are "good kids" who teachers write comments like "pleasure to have in class." Neither talk back to their elders - not even me. Aaron does what he is told, for the most part...except keep his room clean, but that's a pretty typical teenager thing. He has a good head on his shoulders.
Bridgette is the flighty one, who "forgets" whether I was supposed to pick her up or not and walks home rather than takes the bus...I have had several run-ins with her where I thought she was abducted.
Aaron - NEVER. Aaron is steady as an oak. He is all about routine. And, his school is a little further than Bridgette's and he's not into walking.
And, Monday Bridgette got off the bus...without Aaron. The bus stops at Bridgette's school first...and then his. She said he never got on it.
I drove to the school, thinking that if for some reason he walked home, I would see him walking along the sidewalk...no sign of him.
There was one other way to take, that I didn't suppose he'd walk, because there are no sidewalks...he'd have to walk along the road - but I drove that way just in case. No Aaron. I drove back home, expecting him to be there...because it was over an hour after school (so if he walked, he FOR SURE would have been home) but he was not there! I panicked! I told Bridgette to stay at home and have Aaron call me on my cell if she heard from him.
I checked at his best friend's house across the street and gave him the message that if he heard from Aaron to have him call me.
Now, I was WORRIED...it was a LONG TIME since school let out...and a really long time since the bus let off. This was not like Aaron. At all. If he stopped off anywhere (which he had NEVER done in the history of his going to school...) I was sure he would have called.
I went to the school. Luckily, people were still in the office because there were clubs going on. They put his name out over the loudspeaker, asking him to come to the office in the West Wing. We waited. I started to get really nervous. They paged him again. No answer. I silently prayed, because that's all a mom can do. I knew there had to be an explaination.
I called home again, just in case Bridgette forgot to call me. She hadn't heard from him.
The school had their officer-on-campus talk to me. I asked at what point I report this to the police Dept. He said that since Aaron was a juvenile, it was up to me. He asked if there was a reason he would have run away. I explained that Aaron wasn't that kind of kid, and then they looked up Aaron's schedule to see what his last class was and to see if he was present in all his classes that day. He was, but when they saw his workload (because he's in quite a few advanced placement classes with no study hall) they commented that he's got quite a heavy work load. I felt really guilty as a parent, and I remembered that he had gotten a poor grade on an assignment and Mike and I had told him that he better get to the bottom of it and approach his teacher and find out how he could make it up...and get back to us that day at dinner and tell us what her answer was. I kept thinking that that might be why he ran away or why he went missing...maybe we're pushing him too hard to be a good kid, or to excel in school...and I just kept beating myself up. Our town is really crazy about advanced placement classes and the pressures on the kids in our town to excel in their grades are bonkers! We have 16 year olds graduating high school and going to college. 35% of the high school Juniors and Seniors take college courses and many begin college as college sophomores...which sounds great on paper, but it's a lot of stress for the kids...and I want to be sensitive to that. I try to be...but I want my kids to take advantage of living here, too. I want them to be the best they can be. Do I push them too much? Was that why he went missing? Would I be able to find him? Was it worth it? What did I do?
The officer took me into this room of cameras and we figured out where he might be at the end of the day and we watched this poor quality video of all these kids...mostly boys that look EXACTLY ALIKE, mind you - and I was trying to figure out which one was Aaron. Ugh! It was awful. I felt like maybe something was really wrong. My stomach had that sinking feeling. And, stress makes MS symptoms flare up...and dizziness was encroaching on me...I had to sit down on this desk behind me...I didn't want anyone to know I had MS, so I had to act really casual - I was trying to pay attention to the video screen, hear and process what this officer was telling/asking me, hide the dizziness and not fall over, and try to calm down - all at the same time. Not an easy feat.
Then...my cell phone rang.
It was Aaron.
He was home.
I told him we were going to talk when I got home.
I thanked the people in the office.
On the way out, the principal asked where we live.
I told him.
He said that Aaron probably walked in back of the high school and followed the train tracks, which is why I couldn't find him on the road.
Well, that is EXACTLY what he did...
But he had never done that from the high school (just the middle school...since this is his first year in high school) and he got lost in the woods...and he had to backtrack -
and since he didn't have a cell phone (which he really let me know about! Again - the sob story about being the only kid on the planet...blah, blah, blah) he couldn't call and tell me. It seems he missed the bus, because he was reading in the halls to pass the time until the bus came and it came and went without his knowledge.
I asked him why he didn't go to the office and call me to let me know he was walking.
He said there was too long a line.
I told him "tough."
Next time he better call!
Little does he know that if there IS a next time, he will have his own phone.
This Christmas gift we're giving him - after this happening TWICE in one week...once with Bridgette (which I can expect every now and again because her head is in the clouds) and this time with Aaron (which about sent me into cardiac arrest) is turning out to be the gift that is at the top of MY LIST.
Santa, all I want for Christmas is cell phones for kids. Or sanity...which happens to look like the same thing for now.