Remember when Sears had a toy department every year in the basement? Kids loved to go, right? You felt safe, closed in, if you just watched the stairway outta there. Wes must have been 2 1/2 (yes he was late training. So late that his day care teacher would say to him. “Meet me at the changing table.”) We were, Amy, Wes, and I, ambling through, aisle by aisle, taking our time — and in an instant he was gone. I’ve never been so scared in my life. We went through the loud speaker announcement with description, the closing of all outside doors to the store, clerks searching everywhere, and as usual Amy trying to calm down her hysterical mom. We called her ‘Other Mother.’

In the toy department, almost out of my mind, I looked, and for the first time paid attention to, double doors leading from the toy section to the rest of the basement. Oh, yes, he did.

Seems the doors had been opened briefly and closed. He was fast. (His baseball team benefited from stolen bases later.) We found him very happy, sitting up on a bright, red real tractor — with his pants full. I probably didn’t enter Sears again for, oh, maybe a year.