A Tragedy of Epic Porpoises*

With the girls out of town with their grandmother, we decided to invite some of the boys' friends over for play dates. So we made some calls yesterday and set some up. The first was scheduled for today, with the medium Little Jogger's friend, whom I shall call Oscar. Oscar was to come at 1:00, and the medium Little Jogger started to get antsy by about mid morning. By 12:30, he was looking out the window every 30 seconds.

One o'clock came and went. No Oscar. 1:15. No Oscar. At 1:35, I called Oscar's mom to see if we had gotten our signals crossed. Well, no, we hadn't, but Oscar had decided he'd rather stay home. The mom had called and left a message on our machine in the morning. Only she didn't. She may have left a message on someone's machine, but it wasn't ours.

The medium Little Jogger was devastated. He just lay down on his bed and sobbed. And there wasn't anything that we could do. We couldn't blame Oscar's mom (although heaven knows I tried.) It was just one of those things. Try telling that to an eight-year-old.

Eventually, of course, the storm passed. The medium Little Jogger has come out of his room, and is now bossing the smallest Little Jogger around upstairs. Oscar will come another day, and all will be OK.

*The title of this post is a malapropism coined by the smallest Little Jogger, which has now become part of the family vocabulary.