95. A Helping Pinkie Finger
My two-year-old toddler went to a two-hour class three times a week at the local church. This was in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. I should mention that this church was on the main road through town, which often had logging trucks carrying tons of wood driving on it. I went to pick up my son one day, and I could see he had been crying.
He had puffy, red eyes, and he confirmed as much when he said, “Mommy, I cried!” His teacher looked equally distraught. She said, “I need you to stay after class.” A few of the other kids were still there, waiting for their moms. I sat there with my son, and my heart was pounding. Had he bitten another child or something?
That wasn’t like him, but with kids you never know. All the students finally left, and his teacher turned to me and said, “As you know, we had an outing today.” I had signed a release form for the outing, which was for them to leave the school and walk next door to look at the fountain. She continued, “We used the buddy system walking over and back, but once I got to the classroom and counted the kids, I realized one was missing.”
By now, the teacher was almost crying herself. As I said, this church was on a main road. My child had somehow gotten separated from the others, and was alone, unsupervised, for five to ten minutes just yards from a busy main road with fully loaded lumber diesel trucks whizzing by. The teacher continued, “I ran as fast as I could to go look for him. He was standing at the main door, pounding at it to get in and screaming. I’m so sorry.”
Apparently, he had somehow found his way back to the main building, standing outside until someone found him. At this point, my son piped up. “The pink lady helped me!” I gathered my son up and took him home, telling his teacher that it was okay, these things happened, thank God it turned out fine, etc. I felt bad that she was so upset, but I was rattled to the core.
It was terrifying just imagining my toddler running loose next to a busy street, and he was clearly traumatized by it. On the way home, I asked him, “Who is the pink lady?” At that time, if he didn’t know someone’s name, he’d identify them by what color they were wearing, so the pink lady must have been wearing pink clothing.
I wanted to know who this was, because if she “helped” him, as he said, then this person found a lost toddler, led my son up to the outside of a building, and just left him there without trying to find an adult or even opening the door to let him inside. What adult would do that? My son knew the names of all the people at the school, so this was a stranger to him.
When my husband got home, I told him the whole story, with my son again babbling about a “pink lady.” My husband got a very strange look on his face and said, “You know, my grandmother was buried in her favorite pink dress.”