Over in Great Britain, now that the Queen's Jubilee is just a soggy memory, the press is all worked up about how Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife left their young daughter "down the pub" after a Sunday outing. They had come in two cars and each group thought she was with the other as they headed home to Number 10.
She was discovered in the restroom and rightly returned.
They've tried to make it a metaphor for how he's handling the country. Others have taken up the class angle, noting the Camerons' poshness, snarking that the middle class routinely leave their kids at the pub, except in the parking lot with a can of pop. All day.
No matter how you see it, upon reading the account, I only felt an immense sense of commiseration. See, even the leader of England has left his kid somewhere, I tell my son.
"Sure Mom, you're in good company", was the general but smirking response.
But I'll never live it down.
Back when the kids were little, we were in the habit of hitting the video store for movies quite regularly. Sometimes they both went with me, other times it would me only my daughter. When the two of them accompanied me, my son's routine was to head straight for the free video games while my daughter and I chose the movie. We'd pay for the video and drag him from the game and make our way the mile or so home.
Like those times when you arrive home but can't remember the car trip there, these journeys all blurred together after awhile. One day when we pulled into the driveway coming home I noticed a few huge weeds that had sprung up. My daughter went into the house while I stopped in the garden and started pulling weeds. One weed led to another, and another. Thirty minutes later she came out of the house and asked me where her brother was.
