My family has had quite a year of multiple hospital visits (heart surgery, anyone?) and ongoing misfortunes that would render even Murphy (as in the “Law”) speechless.
I resolved to kick 2011 to the curb by doing my holiday shopping and preparations early so I could feel like I had at least something under control.
Oh, how wrong I was.
To support our elementary school, I decided to have my kids purchase gifts for each other at the two-day traveling holiday toy store. The idea was to send them to school with money and let them pick out a gift for each other.
Sound easy? Apparently The Easy Button does not exist for Murphy’s Law.
My son Bode goes to morning kindergarten. The toy shop was in the afternoon. No problem, I just brought him back to school and had him pick out his sister Hadley’s gift. He ignored my suggestions of jewelery and went straight for a dinosaur egg that hatches in water
Gotta give the boy credit: he’s looking for a win-win gift.
However the other problem was that Hadley had the money for both presents and she had not yet done her shopping. The nice volunteer assured us they would set Bode’s gift to the side, ring it up with her purchases and then discreetly put Bode’s gift to his sister in his teacher Mrs. C’s** box for him to later bring home.
I forgot about it until last week when I was putting the finishing touches on all our presents and realized Bode had never received the gift.
I called the school secretary Mrs. M.** and explained the case of the missing dinosaur egg. She promised she would call Mrs. C. and also gave me the name of the volunteer who ran the toy store.
Not even 15 minutes later, Secretary M. called back.
“We found out what happened,” she said in her best sleuth voice. Turns out instead of delivering the dinosaur egg to Mrs. C.’s box, the volunteer had put it in the same bag as Hadley’s gift to her brother.
As Hadley was riding on the bus home from school, she found it. Knowing it wasn’t hers, she gave it to the eager boy sitting next to her.
Now this is where the story gets really suspicious. The boy to whom she gave the dinosaur egg just happened to be Mrs. C.’s son.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
Mrs. C. came home that day to find the dinosaur hatched in a glass of water. Her son divulged Hadley gave it to him and she thought nothing of it. Until she received the phone call from me.
I was relaying the escapade to my husband Jamie later that day and he queried, “How many of JeffCo’s tax dollars were wasted from all the time it took to chase that dinosaur egg down?”
I’m part of the blame for the $20 million deficit.
In the end, Secretary M. was extremely remorseful. “I’m really sorry. There’s not much we can do about it at this point. The Egg has been opened.”
That’s school code for “The Mission Has Been Compromised.”
But let it be known that I’m onto them.
**Note: Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Or guilty.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 