THE LOST BOY

My son, Charlie is now 18 and lives with me and is in college.

This is a story of when he was 3 years old. He was always opening the front door and running outside--with me running after him.

One day he made it to the edge of the neighbor's yard. The neighbor lady was there and bawled me out for letting Charlie get loose. After that I always double locked the front door.

One day it had been 2 or 3 minutes and no Charlie!  We had a large 4 bedroom house with an attached garage.  

First, just in case I looked outside. And then started calling for him "Charlie where are you?" "Charlie come on out" "Charlie please answer me!"

I was starting to panic. I had been through all the rooms in the house and the attached garage--looking for Charlie and calling out to him--but to no avail. 4 times through the whole house and garage!  Finally I called 911 and asked for help.

A policeman came rather quickly and told me not to worry he had been in this kind of situation before. So the two of us went through the whole house again both of us calling for him. I said "Charlie, the policeman wants you to come out" We had gone through every room of the house twice and we were in the attached garage talking about the situation. And then out of the corner of my eye I saw a little movement. It was a box and behind the box was Charlie. He had apparently hid there all this time [almost an hour] and the fact that I was calling him to come out and then the policeman called him to come out--did not really impress him.

Of course, I was greatly relieved to find him. I did not punish him as I did not think he knew what he was doing was so scary and frustrating to me.

I just told him never to do it again. [ he is age 18 now and has not done it again]