double-check

One Halloween weekend when Eli was a junior in high school, he was away for a singing competition with the high school madrigal group. It was several hours away and the group traveled in two vans and spent a night there in a hotel. Competition went well and afterwards the whole group stopped for supper before making the long trip home. Eli and his friend, Ben, dashed to the men’s room for one last pit stop and came out to find everyone had left. Both cars were gone from the parking lot. They didn’t worry just yet, surely someone would notice they were missing and come back for them within a few minutes. But after a while, they realized that no one had noticed they were missing, probably everyone had just assumed the boys were in the other car. That is exactly what happened. So on Halloween night they were stranded in a far away place, nowhere to be and with very little money…

Eli called home, hoping we would come to his rescue. Dad was perturbed at the whole situation, so wasn’t much help, plus we were in the middle of selling the car Eli used (adding insult to injury). We tried to reach one of the drivers by cell phone; it was turned off. We called Ben’s folks, the boys called us back again… Finally, after a few more phone calls, it was arranged for the boys to spend the night there with a distant relative of Ben’s mother and the boys could be retrieved the next day. No harm done, a funny story to tell to the grandkids, right?

And tell it to the grandkids we will, for Eli married one of the girls in that car, the driver is now his father-in-law!