Where is Mom?
I used to hate when this happened: I’d be in my bedroom doing homework. Everyone else was around the house doing their own thing in their own space. Outside my door, Mom passed by. In a couple of minutes I would call on her with a homework question - I don't know: How do you spell “Confederation?” or, “metamorphosis,” or “Shakespeare,” or something.
I called, “Mom!”
No answer. I called and called again with a rising voice. “Mom! Mom! Mom! Soon, it was a question. “Mom?"
I left my room and started looking for her, after having just seen her a couple minutes before.
The upstairs. “Mom? Mom?”
My parents’ bedroom, the bathroom. Other bedrooms.
“Mom?”
Go downstairs. The kitchen, the dining room, the living room. “Mom!? Mom!?”
Where the hell could she be?
Then the laundry room in the basement. “Mom!”
Then outside to the patio and the garage. “Mom!!!”
Then the garden. “Mom!!!!”
Finally, back upstairs, still calling, “Mom! Mom?”
What the hell? She was just here, and I spent 10 minutes looking for her everywhere.
Eventually she was back, having been nearby all the time, talking to a neighbour in a little out-of-the-way corner of the garden.
“Oh, I didn't hear you” she said.
What the hell!! I used to hate when that happened.