Unbeknownst to me, as I stood in the Florida sunshine amidst a grassy field of elementary school students at attention and their teachers stoically patroling, waiting for the "all clear", there was one child missing.
BigGirl.
A sea of nearly 1300 students and she was unaccounted for.
Luckily for me, (a) I was in the dark and never suspected for a second that her whereabouts were ever in question, and (b) she was never REALLY missing. There was just a misunderstanding about procedures for handling students in her weekly enrichment class. (Whew!)
However, afterwards, when I caught wind of her "disappearance", like any good mother, I thought for a minute (or two), those crazy paranoid thoughts that we all (I) think sometimes. Do you ever do that?
I imagined myself standing on that same soccer field, but this time, there was smoke. There were sirens. Then, a handful of people run to me with ominous looks on their faces. Their hands are on my back; they're supporting me with their strength as they explain that she's missing. I'm frantically begging for a cell phone as I remember my Blackberry is on my desk upstairs.
I call FireDaddy and cry as I, hysterically, demand him to, "Get in that firetruck and get over her and FIND OUR BABY AND GET HER OUT!!!"
Then, I snap out of it.
This isn't the first time my crazy, random fears have manifested into ultra-realistic daymares.
One minute, I'm innocently driving over the bridge, completely at ease behind the wheel. The next, I'm watching my car launch off the side of the bridge and careening into the river below. I can see the water rising outside of my car. My windows are darkening with the dirty, polluted water. The smell of oil and gas fills my diminishing air supply as I breathe. I reach for my handy-dandy car escape tool that My Mama gifted to everyone one Christmas. I fumble to cut my seatbelt and - God forbid my children are in the car - cut their belts as well. I struggle to break the glass and keep my head free from panic. The water is cold and my girls are heavy in my arms.
But, I shake it off. My car is dry and calm and the Jason Mraz is singing one of my favorites. My eyes once again focus on the road ahead of me as I feel the tension leave my shoulders and jaw loosen.
The superstitious side of me worries about thinking these horrors. If I think them, will they come true? The supernatural part of me worries they are premonitions. Will these be like those dreams of mine that later come true? Though they seem purely fiction at the time, will they one day be alive? Will I one day recognize that old, familiar feeling filling me, and think to myself, "So this is how it happens..." Even now, by letting these hallucinations leave my mind and take a presence on the internet, I worry that I will open a door and permit them into my life.
Do you ever think these things?
(P.S. I told you I was neurotic.)
