Sometime before the holiday break, Jill had a Monday morning appointment. Since someone had to keep an eye on Lucy for the couple of hours her Mommy would be away, I arranged to work from home.
“OK. Lucy’s still asleep. I should be back by 11. Are you going to be OK?” Jill whispered as she pulled on a coat.
“No problemo,” I replied, barely looking up from the glow of my computer screen. I motioned behind me to the large, dark-brown Siamese cat snoring in loud intervals from his favorite chair.
“Wubert and I have this covered.”
“Uh-huh,” Jill said (did she just roll her eyes at me?) as she waved bye and trudged to the door. “Call me if you need me.”
And she was gone.
“This isn’t so tough,” I thought as I picked up the cordless and called into a staff meeting. All was fairly quiet. The kid snoozed in the next room, Wubert snored contentedly next to me. I listened in to my call.
A few minutes into the call, Wubert stirred and slowly made his his way out of the room.
I muted my call. “Don’t wake up the kid!” I told him. He gave me a blank stare—and made a beeline to the sleeping Lucy.
“Wawaroooh! Wawaroooh!”
“WTF?” I quickly muted my phone and leapt from my chair, my sole purpose in life: putting the kibosh on some incredibly loud Siamese yodeling. As I entered Lucy’s room, I realized I was too late. The kid was now sitting upright, a scrunched up look of tired bewilderment on her face.
“Mommy?” she asked softly in an “I’m thinking about crying” tone. The fuzzy traitor stood right next to her. He gave me a blank stare.
“Good morning, kid!” I lied as I fantasized about dropkicking Wubert out a window. “Howzabout a cookie—and a Huckle cartoon?”
Though I was well aware this wasn’t the optimum morning routine for the kid, I knew I had to get back to my call in case any questions were being tossed my way.
With the kid situated in front of the TV with a schoolboy cookie in hand, I dashed back to my desk and unmuted my call.
I was in luck. I was just in time to give my weekly spiel.
After my spiel, the kid wandered to my doorway. Her schoolboy was long gone and she was now entirely awake.
“Race me, Daddy!” Before I could react, she’d turned and darted to the kitchen. “I win!” I heard her little voice sing from across the condo.
A few seconds later she was back. “Come on—race me, Daddy!”
But this time I was better prepared. Before she could sprint away, I sprang from my chair, gave her a quick sidestep, and started plodding my way to the kitchen.
“Ha! I’m winning!” I shouted back to her. “You can’t catch me!”
I reached the kitchen, giggling like an idiot. “I win!” I shouted happily as she found her way to our makeshift finish line. But before she could reply, we were both stopped dead in our tracks.
“Huh? What’s that? What’s going on?” the confused little voices said.
Lucy and I were both puzzled for a second. Where were those funny voices coming from? Then Lucy pointed at my hand. I looked down. In my hand was my unmuted phone. I was still on my staff call! I’d just (barely) beaten a two-year old in a foot-race to the fridge and about fifteen people had been listening in. I quickly muted the phone.
Luckily, I knew that at least a half a dozen people would be calling in to the meeting, so I remained silent and played dumb. Nobody would know who the dork on the phone was if I played my cards right. They’d just have a vague realization that it was someone out of the six. I was good with that.
A few seconds later, the meeting proceeded and I was off the hook for what could have been a pretty embarrassing moment. Crisis averted, I raced Lucy back to my office.
