Yesterday Noah went on a field trip to New York City. The Big Apple. The City the Never Sleeps. The Top Terrorist Target in the Country. Did I say that out loud?
You bet I did.
I was already primed to be a little wigged out. Months ago when they were asking for chaperones, I immediately saw that the date of the field trip was the same as our annual meeting in San Francisco. I would be out of town the entire week. Not only could I not go along, with all the other helicopter parents but I wouldn’t even be at home to help him pack his lunch the night before. Cue Jewish mother guilt music. (Sunrise, Sunset?)
Over the weekend I had followed the news about the Times Square bomber, but in my crazy state of work preparation, I didn’t make the connection until Wednesday night as I sat alone in my hotel room watching a CNN Breaking News report about another car that was left running and smelling like gasoline near the Triboro Bridge. Then it hit me:
- Noah = New York
- New York = Terrorist Target
- Terrorist Target = Noah
I checked my watch. It was 11:30 p.m. on the east coast. I wanted to call Dave and ask him if he thought we should keep Noah home. I knew what he would say, but I needed him to say it:
“You are being ridiculous. Everything will be fine.”
You see, by having that conversation, I would be inoculating my son from danger. In my superstitious mind, articulating my worst fears out loud insures that they won’t be realized. This falls into the same bucket as telling Dave that if my plane goes down, I want him to marry again. Am I the only one who does this?
But I didn’t call Dave because, uh, that would be letting the terrorists win. Yeah right. Who am I kidding? I didn’t call Dave because I didn’t have the heart to wake him up to satisfy my psychotic tendencies. And I didn’t want to be the only psycho Mom in the entire 6th grade. No other Moms were questioning the trip, probably because THEY didn’t want to be the psycho Moms.
So we all sat in collective silence. Worrying. All day.
Noah arrived home about an hour after I did. We were both on time, tired and happy. He saw the UN building (“Mom, I technically peed in 192 different countries”), Times Square (“Mars 2112 felt like night even though it was only 4:30”) and ate lunch in Central Park (“We climbed a rock.”)
“It was pretty epic,” he quipped as I drove him home from the school parking lot.
Epic indeed. Terrorists 0. Psycho Moms 1.
