I’m counting on that Mom adrenaline thing you hear so much about

If I’m going to spend all this time worrying about wildly unlikely things that could happen to Boy Detective, I might as well come up with a plan for each of these events.

So, in the wildly unlikely event that Boy Detective and his grandmother are out for a walk and someone pushes her down and kidnaps him, I plan to be coincidentally taking out the garbage. That way, I will see it happen, and I will run after the car. I will be wearing my strap-on sandals and not my backless sandals, so running will not be a problem. The car will head towards I-35, which means uphill, and it will probably run the stop sign, but I will catch up to them anyway because moms do that kind of thing when their kids are in danger.

The car will have one of those spare tires on the back, and a bumper that allows a foothold, so I will jump on. This will result in me riding on the back of the car down a busy highway, causing multiple calls to 911 with our exact location, which will cause the police to show up fairly quickly. Especially since by this point we will be just a bit north of downtown, which is where the main police station is located.

The people driving the car will be stupid enough to think they can bluff their way out of it, so they will pull over and thank the policemen for coming to help them with the crazy woman who jumped on their car for no reason trying to steal their son. Their lack of cat seat and the fact that Boy Detective is reaching towards me yelling “Mom Mom Mom!” will somewhat undercut their claim to be his parents. The earlier call to 911 by Boy Detective’s grandmother describing exactly what happened will also be somewhat persuasive, as will my detailed description of the bruise on toenail from when he dropped the water bottle on it, the birthmark on the back of his head, and his current collection of mosquito bites.

The policemen will take Boy Detective away from the kidnappers and put them in the back of a cruiser. They will call Children’s Protective Services, which will alarm me significantly, but one nice policeman will point out that they don’t have car seats in the back of cruisers anyway and it’s just a formality. In the meantime they would like to have the nice paramedics look at me and make sure I’m not too banged up. (I have not yet decided whether I will end up with a couple of broken fingers. You can’t control everything.) That nice policeman will hold Boy Detective while we wait, and walk over near me, and I will pretend that everything is just fine so that he calms down and enjoys playing with the officer’s badge.

By this time, C-Man will be frantically driving up I-35 because his mother called him right after she called 911. One of the policemen will lend me a phone to call him and tell him to head for the police station so he can rendezvous with the nice CPS worker, who has just showed up and thinks Boy Detective is adorable. Having finished my medical checkup, I ride over separately in the back of a cruiser.

After 20 minutes of paperwork, statement-giving, and formalities, Boy Detective is released back into our custody and we all go home and take a nap. I refuse to give interviews to the media because quite frankly, I’m a very busy person and see no reason to dwell on the event.

Now that I am completely prepared for this scenario, I will work on “wild dogs roaming the neighborhood that attack us in library parking lot.” Key items in that plan probably include closed-toed shoes and an umbrella, but obviously I need a few more details.