The Case of the Vanishing Young Bibliophile

Tonight I went to pick up Madeleine and Ian from Russian Math, as is our routine on Tuesday evenings.  Madeleine gets out at 5:30, and usually we go off to the nearby variety store and get candy - my little bribe/consolation prize for the fact that they are among very few non-immigrant children who are compelled to take extra math classes outside of their regular school.  If they were Indian, Russian, or maybe Chinese, there might be some "cultural expectations" to make this school-after-school thing seem less of an imposition, but for third-generation Yankee youth, this extra time investment is pretty unusual - all the more so for New Hampshire youngsters.

I let Madeleine pick out Ian's candy - usually Skittles - and by the time we have made our selection, it's nearly 6:00 and time to pick up Ian.  Usually, he comes along pretty quickly, but this week was different.  He saw us waiting for him in the Overbearing Parents' Waiting Room/front desk area, but then he completely disappeared, and we waited for him nearly ten minutes, went downstairs to see if he had set off on his own, came back up, and still couldn't find him.   I had a pretty good sense that he was somewhere around, because I heard a very familiar cough, which I figured could only be his.  [Each offspring has their own caw/bark/howl/meow/cough, which a parent can always recognize in the wild...]

So we could hear him, but we still didn't see him.  Luckily, Madeleine is more energetic and creative than me, and she went around to a little corner of the office, far outside most people's line of vision, which happened also to be the Lost and Found cubbies.  Ian was sitting on the floor next to those cubbies, in the very most remote part of the office, reading a book.

I wasn't thrilled that he kept us waiting, but I didn't ask him why he took off like that.  Nevertheless, Ian quickly volunteered the "story behind the story"...

"Mom says that very soon, they're going to be clearing out the Lost and Found, and they've got a really good book."

It turns out that one child's Lost and Found is another's magical library hide-away.

(November 25, 2014)