What A Lovely Night To Get Lost

It was a balmy evening, 6 p.m., approximately 50-60-70 degrees (all I know is that we didn't need jackets unlike when I was a kid and it was always freezing and my mom would make my brother and me wear a friggin parka over our plastic Wonder Woman and He-Man cotumes and we would get pissed because we couldn't show them off) and the kids in the neighborhood began their trick-or-treating extravaganza (by the way, has anyone EVER had a trick played on them or played a trick on someone else instead of getting a treat?).

The kids and I walked to my neighbor's house and a crew of us started our way (make note that we were 7 adults and 9 children).

We went from house to house and we let the kids go to the doors by themselves while we adults stood at the curb chatting away. I did a head count of my 3 kids as we would continue to the next house.

Well, at some point I stopped counting and after a while, I decided to do a head count again.

"M, do you see Jessica up at the door?"

"No, I don't."

"Maybe she's in front of the older kids."

I shout to Brendon who's still at the door to ask if his sister is with him and he says no.

M and I don't see her with any of the kids walking back to the curb. My neighborhood has no street lights which makes it difficult to see anything. Plus, being that Jessica was dressed as a lady bug mostly in black, it made it that much more difficult to see her.

I thought maybe she was lagging behind at house we'd already been to or maybe got caught up in another group.

Jake didn't want me to leave him so I carried him, running down the street screaming Jessica's name.

M left Brendon and her 2 kids with the other adults in our group and started asking people if they saw a little girl dressed like a lady bug while I ran down the street screaming Jessica's name.

I didn't fear that someone abducted her, but I felt awful thinking about how scared she was that she couldn't find me.

M and I soon met up with each other and M told me someone told her that she saw Jessica walking with a woman and 2 young girls and that the woman said she knew Jessica.

We both realized it must've been E whose daughter babysits for us....or at least I'd hoped it was.

M told me to run home and get my car so that I could drive and find Jessica. When I reached my house, Jeff told me that E called and said she found Jessica in the middle of the road and that she was fine and would bring her home.

It was taking quite a while for them to get back to the house and I was a bit panicked only because of the fact that I lost my daughter and just wanted her with me.

I was relieved to know that E had Jessica, but I was anxious to get her home, so I ran up our street (can I tell you how tired I was with all of this running around) and saw Jessica, E, and her 2 girls coming from a house.

The reason why it took so long for E to get Jessica back home was because they Trick-or-Treated they're way back. E told me Jessica was so brave and wasn't crying when she found her. I was relieved to hear that and my girl looked quite proud of herself.

I soon gathered the boys once Jessica was in the house and everyone was home safely with a load of candy that I immediately dug through to get to a Reese's peanut butter cup to calm my nerves.

"Shannon, did you hear what Jessica said?"

"No, what did she say?"

"She said, 'I had a great time trick-or-treating with Mrs. W (E)'."

That girl is something else.