Inspirations from cheese in a can. joey, kelly and danny.

yesterday, danny and i had a playdate. i had planned the activity, doing my part to fill the mom’s club activity calendar. yesterday morning it was raining and nasty, and joey and i had a long discussion about whether or not i should go. joey’s arguments: you don’t want to, it’s rainy, you’re tired, you’re grumpy, and what if it’s not safe (these words actually came out of his mouth…..in reference to rain, but still, weird). my arguments: don’t want to, rainy, tired, grumpy, said i’d be there, i’m going. so we went. joey was right. [there it is, baby. in print. you can save it in as many formats as you like, you may never see it again.]

danny loved the play area at arbor place. it looks like a bunch of hard plastic things for kids to climb on and break their faces on, but they are actually soft structures on which it’s a good bit harder to hurt themselves. of course captain climb-matic tried to climb this rock-looking thing that was five feet tall right off the bat. it does no good to explain to him that he is but 30 inches tall and of questionable coordination. anyway, he loved it, and though no mom’s club friends joined us, we made other friends at the play area, and he had very much fun. he quite enjoys a chik-fil-a chicken salad sandwich, as do i, so after we played for an hour, i thought we’d share one in the food court.

i had just put him in a high chair and given him his sippy cup when what you just hope will never happen to you happened to us. gunshots in the mall. i took maybe 2 seconds to absorb what was going on, yanked him out of his chair, threw him on the floor, and laid myself on top of him. i panted and silently freaked and kissed his hair and shooshed him when he began protesting this miserable end to his lunch. here i must point out that people are strange. on the floor, i could only see one other food court patron. he was an older man, still sitting in his chair, still eating his lunch. he would look around, scared, and eat a bite. of what, i don’t know, but it must have been good. he did that probably four times before i saw movement behind me and realized that the dairy queen manager was urging people to duck through the service entrance to the food court restaurants. i picked danny up, grabbed my bag so i could call joey, and ran.

we ended up under the sink in the dairy queen kitchen and/or storage area. our surprise inspection yielded amazing results: incredibly clean. danny played with a cup of teddy grahams, and tried to climb a shelf of cleaning supplies and a miniature table saw (!?). i called joey and told him that we were okay, but…. funny how that always seems to be a big tip-off that things are the way opposite of okay. there were probably a dozen or so other people whose lunches (days? years?) had just been ruined, there with us in the cramped room. an older lady was there with her daughter. it took her much longer to stop shaking than the rest of us. so long that she was visited by the EMTs when they showed up, but she was okay. ish. i hope that she and her daughter made it home to enjoy their kirkland’s purchases in sweet christmas peace.

for whatever reason, we were released from the dairy queen kitchen (but not from the mall, which was on lockdown) after about half an hour. back into the food court we went. some people resumed their lunches. some people ordered food. some people were mopping up messes from drinks spilled in the chaos. i made a tenuous journey to our table, took a couple pictures with my phone, grabbed our stuff, and dashed back into the corner so i could feed danny. while standing there, i saw people pointing out a bullet hole. it was in the window directly above the play area. suddenly i didn’t feel so safe again. i asked the lady at the thai kitchen if we could hang out somewhere a little removed from the area where bullets had just been whizzing. since they may or may not have caught all the people responsible for that. she and the manager looking guy were very happy to usher us back. i sat perched on a stool, where i could still see out into the food court, but any bullets would have a much smaller chance of hitting us. there i fed danny saltines and his chicken salad sandwich. and his sweet tea. heaven!

finally the thai kitchen lady said she thought we could go safely, because she had heard that it was all clear now. that two people had been hurt outside the movie theater, but it was okay to go now. by now i had pieced together from other peoples’ conversations that there had been a robbery attempt. for some reason, this made me feel better. my thoughts as i lay on the ground over my child was that there was a disgruntled psycho or two, roaming the mall, hunting the cutest babies. since we didn’t have a bag of cash and were more than willing to stay the hell out of anyone’s way who wanted one, it seemed we had a shot at making it out alive.

while waiting to be free from this nightmarish mall, i wandered around listening to what people had seen. i also found another bullet hole, and snapped a picture of it. so in all, i saw two bullet holes. and the spot that i had picked to feed danny his sandwich was DIRECTLY between the two. so no, joey, it was not particularly safe. but we made it out, and made it home, and will live, hopefully never to experience another freak anything again. two this year will be quite sufficient, thank you. if you care to see the bullet holes between which we were sitting, or what people can do to a table to get up in a hurry, look over to the right at the flickr bar.