Thirty scary seconds

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.
--H.P. Lovecraft
When I arrived home after my shift in Campbellford, there was a message on the phone, bu Cheryl and Hugh were out, and I didn't pick up the message before Cheryl called and suggested I join her and Hugh for lunch with Sarah and Farah at the Sleepless Goat. I had forgotten that Sarah was going to look after Hugh for an hour or two while Cheryl and Neva went to the dentist in the morning. We had a good lunch and got home about 1pm. I went down for a post-call nap, and Cheryl put Hugh down and went into work.

When I got up, I realized the message still hadn't been picked up, and checked it. It was Neva's school saying that they hoped we had her since she wasn't at school today.

The seconds it took me to call them back and figure out how to ask en français if there was some sort of mistake were enough for me to think some pretty horrible things could have happened, including but not limited to the idea of Neva having have been missing for several hours already...

When they picked up, I was quickly imformed that Neva was in fact present, and that they regretted the error - perhaps the teacher was just too quick to return the attendance sheet this morning. I breathed a great sigh of relief.

When I told Cheryl about the great scare I'd had, she seemed unsurprised. She remembered about the dental appointments in the morning, and naturally figured out that the note she had written to the teacher advising her must hot have made it there in time.

If I had been less absent-minded, I might have saved myself some anxiety...