no need to panic.

When I picked Eliot up from school one day last week, his teacher met me in the lobby. She wanted to tell me of an “incident” on the playground that afternoon.

Apparently, the events transpired thusly:

Eliot was playing with a couple of his friends. Parents were starting to come for pick-up. One of his friends ran up to the teacher and asked if she knew where Eliot was. Had his mommy come to get him? No, she had not. But certainly, he was nowhere to be seen. They checked the sign-out log, and sure enough, he had not been signed out. At that point, his teacher relayed, panic set in. She told the front desk that she thought she had a missing child, and inquired of the “missing child protocol”.

Meanwhile, the other teachers on the (very large) playground began a serious search. They looked in the bushes, in the tube slide, behind all the corners… Nothing. One of his old teachers (Ms. Melissa) thought it odd that Eliot would disappear. She was sure that it wasn’t in his nature to run off. That’s when she spied, in the far corner of the playground, The Ball Bucket. Acting on hunch, she approached The Ball Bucket, where she found my precious son, crouched down, head covered. “Eliot? Whatcha doin’?” He looked up at her and whispered, “Shhh! We’re playing Hide and Seek. They have not found me yet.” And crouched back down inside the bucket. At which point the search was called off, the panic subsided, and the teachers all breathed a sigh of relief.

The whole incident lasted about 30 minutes, from what I can gather. I’m sure Eliot would have remained in the bucket indefinitely, if it weren’t for Ms. Melissa giving away his hiding place (which he was somewhat disappointed about). It certainly was the talk of the school yesterday afternoon. The teachers all had a very good nature about it, laughing and calling it “The Great Hide-N-Seek Incident”. Even this morning several teachers stopped me to compliment Eliot’s superior hiding skills.