Didn't Happen

Our son's school has this techno-marvo system where the teacher types in an email, and we get it both as a robot-voiced phone message and an email.

This past week, I got the phone message about the spring music concert and talent show being moved across the street FIVE TIMES. So Friday when I picked up the phone Time #6 and heard "This is a mess-age from XXX school . . .", I hung up.

Friday after school was a busy time:

Library day, when we lug last week's wrung-out haul of books back and replace them with fresh plump shiny new books.

A quick trip to the local playground, because in these sit-in-front-of-the-computer days, any time the child asks for running around loose time, I am all about the unstructured play.

Home, and a quick supper before the concert.

Then back to school. Except . . . the door was locked. "? ? ?" thought I, nervously wondering what Message #6 had said.

We went across the street and found numerous other kids playing in the school playground. Their parents were inside the school. I walked around and didn't find the music teacher, silently thinking, "Oh, no. Tell me I didn't mix up the time. It was 6pm . . . wasn't it? Or did they postpone it to 7pm?" Sinking feeling as I thought, "Or did those calls say it was at 5pm?"

I read my plump shiny library book and let the child play and run around until 7pm. At which time, people started to leave! And go home.

So we left, and went home, and I said, "Well, um, I guess you don't have to sing. Did they say at school that they changed the time or anything?"

[Back seat: silence. The child has his own plump shiny library book and is off in the world of Eragon somewhere.]

I drove home, wondering if I had blown a brain fuse and gone to the school an hour late, and how I would excuse that to the music teacher.

When we got home, I checked my email and read "Spring concert cancelled due to the music teacher having emergency eye surgery this afternoon". I read this to our son, who said, "Oh! Yeah, they said she had to have eye surgery or she would have gone blind."

Which of course, he didn't remember until I read it to him.