The title of this post was suggested by my best friend from college, Jaclyn, or Auntie Jaclyn, as I like to say. All of our close friends seem to have been turned into honorary aunts and uncles, which may be a little confusing for the boys. I can't wait until the day they go to school and have to draw a picture of their family, and wear their crayons down to nubs trying to draw
pictures of all their various "family members." I actually think it is pretty cool, since it just means they have a whole lot of people who love them.
We went down to Geneva, Indiana, last Sunday to visit Jaclyn, who was escaping the dog days of summer in New Orleans and visiting her family. Aaron and I usually only get to see Jaclyn on our yearly trip to the Big Easy for Jazz Fest, so this was cool. Since we tend not to take the kids on our forays into the French Quarter, Jaclyn hadn't seen the boys since they were tiny. The house in Indiana is gorgeous, her parents are adding onto and remodeling her grandmother's farmhouse, but the setting is so
Indiana. I mean so midwest it could be straight our of a John Mellencamp song, like back when he was John
Cougar Mellencamp. To get to this place, you drive about 20 miles off the highway, take a right at the blinking light, then pull into the driveway in between the giant cornfield and the cemetery. We had a great time there. A place like that is perfect for kids. Jaclyn's dad took us on "bear hunt" in the woods, where we rode this vehicle which was a cross between a golf cart and a gator, down a trail and looked for bears (actually stuffed animals tied to the trees—this was so cool, I am totally stealing this idea for our trips to Drummond Island). The boys shot them all with water guns, so we're all safe, don't worry.
We also swam in the pond on the property, where Connor gave me multiple heart attacks. The kid has absolutely no fear. He kept dunking himself completely under the water, and jumping off a raft into the water, which was shallow, but still made me really nervous. We managed to swim for a while without any mishaps though, so that was good.
Afterward, we were sitting on the porch eating, and Connor and RIley decided they didn't want to eat the fabulous barbecue Jaclyn's mom, Patti, had made, so they went of to play in the yard. The temptation of the cornfield got to be too much, so they started playing around the edge of it. I wasn't really worried, since they always stay pretty close and usually come when they are called. Apparently this was a major lapse in judgement.
Jaclyn had been watching them, and when they ducked out of sight, she went over to check on them, only to find that they had both disappeared into the cornfield. When I said earlier that this was a giant cornfield, I meant it. Acres and acres of corn. Jaclyn went in and found Riley pretty quickly, but then she yelled back to me on the porch, "Jill, we really lost Connor." I thought he was just hiding from Jaclyn, since this is the boys' newest game, one that they find hilarious, since they have no idea what it means to an adult to lose a kid. We called for him, I yelled, threatening "trouble,"— no response. I crawled on hands and knees looking for a glimpse of him, we stood still listening for his movement, nothing. I internally started to freak out, imagining all sorts of horrible scenarios, because the cornfield was so big, if he had taken a wrong turn, he could have walked for a very long time and still been in the corn. I was also thinking that he would start to get scared. If you have never been in a cornfield, it is actually kind of scary. I have done a couple stories on corn farming and had to go into the fields, and gotten really disoriented, really quick. I don't consider myself claustrophobic, but corn freaks me out.
Just when I am really starting to get worried and Jaclyn's mom is getting ready to call the fire department, Jaclyn's dad, Bob, spotted Connor walking back towards the edge of the field, corncob in hand. According to him, he didn't hear the four of us yelling and screaming. When I asked him what he thought he was doing in the corn, he said, "I was just looking for a piece of corn." Right. Like he couldn't have grabbed any one of the hundreds of pieces of corn on the EDGE of the field. Of course not. At this point I was just glad he was okay, so I had a hard time yelling. He did get a stern talking to, though, about how he scared mommy and, "Don't EVER do that again!"
