A few weeks ago we were at the Calgary Stampede and ran into some friends. I looked around and said, “Hey, you’re missing a kid.”
I thought for some reason their middle child hadn’t come with them, but the look on my friend’s face immediately told me that wasn’t the case. It was that combination of What?! and Oh shit as he turned around to look for his son.
They had just walked in the gates but there are throngs of people at that event and they’d walked far enough in that he could have been separated from them in another part of the park. We all started to look around and, as they called the police over to help, I watched my friends’ faces go from Where did he go? to OH MY GOD WHERE IS HE? I can well imagine their panic.
To end the suspense, they did find him. He had followed two people he thought were his parents but who were walking too fast for him to keep up. When he realized he was lost, he asked a volunteer in a uniform to help him and was taken to the lost-child area where his parents found him not long (but quite long enough) after.
The ironic thing is that Rich and I had been talking only minutes earlier (as we entered the park ourselves) about what to do about Connor. One suggestion I had just seen tweeted was to take a picture of your child when you attend an event like this so that, if needed, you have a picture of him showing what he’s wearing. As we left that day my inner anxiety took over and I was caught in that place between worrying I couldn’t handle having a picture like that on my phone and having to look at it forever more, and worrying that I’d regret not taking it if we happened to need it.
The other irony in all this is that I have “safety tattoos” — stickers, essentially, but ones that don’t peel right off — that have our cell phone number on them. We actually have two versions of the SafetyTats – some with our number printed on them and some we can customize ourselves. And we had forgotten to bring them.
Instead, we wrote a cell number on Connor’s arm in pen and, let me tell you, he didn’t like it much. We also did that last weekend when we were out of town and had forgotten to bring the tattoos. (I really need to find a way to remember them.) That time he really didn’t like it, so he promptly rubbed the ink right off. And promptly had it put right back on. And then later when I gave him a wipe to clean his hands, he used it to rub the ink off again.
That’s why I really need to remember to bring the tattoos. Connor loves temporary tattoos so he was quite happy to put one of these on when we’ve used them before. He also thought Grandma should have one. Hers says, “If lost please return to Grandpa.”
Number removed because I don’t really think my husband wants people calling him. ;)
The only problem we encountered was that Connor liked his so much he didn’t want to take it off, and if you leave it on longer than the recommended few days it becomes rather difficult to remove. (He didn’t like that either.)
Overall, I thought these are a pretty good option to have (and especially think so after the ink-removing incidents). Not that they’ll keep your kids 100% safe, of course, but it’s nice to know that if a nice uniformed person (or any other) is trying to help your child find you again, they’ve got a quick way to do that.
Yep, you guessed it. I was given these SafetyTats to review but was otherwise not compensated. All opinions and any failures to remember to bring these are my own (except for the failing to remember part, because my husband didn’t remember those times either).
