When Xing Fu & I have stuff to do mid-week in the evening, I often take light rail to to meet him. Saves me gas & the headache of the Baltimore Beltway & it is nice to sit & read my Nook uninterrupted instead of cursing out a bunch of stoopid drivers. So I'm sitting there reading a good book, minding my own business, other than to hand the MTA transit police my ticket to show that yes, I did indeed purchase a light rail ticket. All of a sudden I get a text from my son who is at home for the evening hopefully cooking himself dinner & doing his homework. He is 15 & has been home by himself many, many times before. The text reads, "Mom, I think we were just robbed." OK, my heart just started beating out of my chest & I'm sure that my eyes were also bulging out of my head because what the flip can I do to help him stuck on the light rail at Lexington Mkt in the middle of downtown Baltimore??? I call him immediately & he proceeds to explain to me, rather calmly I might add, that he was downstairs in the house when he heard the front door crash open & a lot of running & someone (s)? clanging (his word) around upstairs making a lot of noise & then hearing them loudly run out, slamming the door behind them. He also explained that he yelled "HELLO!" numerous times & heard no response. I immediately tell him to stay put downstairs because even though he thinks that they left, you never know. I also told him to call the police & tell them to call him when they are outside the front door. I then call Xing Fu to tell him what happened & thankfully he picks up right away. Xing Fu seemed far less concerned & asked me what could the police do if we were broken into? I said, at least they could make sure that my kid was ok & that there wasn't anybody in the house & take a report of anything missing. At this point I'm almost to my destination & say that I need to call back my kid & make sure he's ok. He says that he's a little in shock & kinda upset but dealing. I tell him to hang tight until the police arrive & then my call-waiting beeps. All of this is happening on the light rail in front of about 20 other folk who I'm sure are enjoying the schadenfreude drama being played out in front of their eyes--poor mother with a house that was just robbed & a teenage son stuck in his room until the police arrive, which, since it's just a home invasion & they do not suspect that the perpetrators are still inside, so it is not considered a top of the list emergency & therefore they are not in any real hurry to get to our residence. And because my kid sounds like an adult man on the phone, the police don't know that he's still a kid & wouldn't be in any hurry anyway....
When I pick up the call, it is Xing Fu. He tells me that he thinks it was his daughter who came in because she needed her work uniform. She had apparently texted him earlier in the afternoon that she was dropping by. Um, OK, that's fine, but HOW THE FREAK IS MY SON SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS???? Especially if he called upstairs & no one answered & that Xing Fu's daughter apparently made a hell of a lot of noise when she did come in. I might be a bit alarmed myself....lesson learned in blended family how-to manual:
If someone is going to drop by unexpectedly or unplanned, and it is certainly fine to do so, please make sure that the folks who might be in the house already know that they are coming. We can then avoid calling the police to our door & otherwise setting the neighbors' tongues wagging....
No comments:
Post a Comment