In my very best calm Father voice

I must say that while I don’t often receive phone calls from my son at work I just had this feeling, a premonition or whatever you want to call it.  I refer to it as a "Father thing"! I was quite calm when the phone rang.  The duties I was carrying out were monotonous to say the least so when on the other end I hear “DAD, I HAVE A SITUATION HERE!"  It did not sink in right away because if it had I would have panicked a little more and thought all kind of horrific scenarios.  In my very best calm Father voice I told him to calm himself and try to explain the situation.


“THE SITUATION ? ? ? THE SITUATION IS I AM AT THE GAS STATION AND I’VE LOCKED MYSELF OUT OF THE CAR AND BROOKLYN IS IN THE CAR SEAT, AND HE IS REALLY LOOSING IT!"

It really is hard to hear my son when he is on the verge of tears and total frustration, an attribute that has stuck with him from birth.  As a child he would try to explain something or some situation that he felt was unjust and I would try my hardest to understand and be able to sympathize with the poor child fairly quickly before the flood of tears and snot would start cascading and then the only thing left for me to do was tell him to go talk to his Mother, in my very best calm Father voice.

I told him to calm himself again, that the reason Brooklyn was upset was because he was upset. “Nathan, try smiling at him and talking on the phone like you were talking to your best friend."

“Ok…..blah blah blah”….(that’s with a smile on his face)…..”blah blah blah….IT’S NOT WORKING DAD, YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND, AND HE’S REALLY CRYING !"

To give you a better picture of the situation at hand, when my dear son gets upset he flails his hands about and walks rapidly back and forth within a space of a few feet and talks so fast you would think he was speaking in tongue.  All actions not pertinent to calming an upset child.

So doing a rapid assessment of the situation and keeping in mind that I was at work which was a good forty minute drive I told him in my very best calm Father voice.

“Six blah blah’s and grimacing like a frightened chimp will not calm him, step away from the car and call the auto club that I pay for every year.  They will be there in a couple of minutes especially when you tell them a small child is locked in the car. “And then call your Mother."

She is only ten minutes away and she has a spare key.

There was a decidedly lengthy pause…." I got to go Dad……I’ll call ya later."  Click.

The auto club was there in just a couple of minutes but they had to take a bit of time to get the door open because they didn’t want to wake Brooklyn up.  He fell fast asleep after Nathan stepped away from the car thus removing his crazed chimp grimace from Brooklyn’s sight.  MeMa was there about five minutes later with the spare key in case the auto club didn’t show up in time.