8560/21479
A mildly complex school pick up today. Ernie was in clubs til 4.30pm but Phoebe was playing cricket. My understanding from the email I'd seen was that they were playing away at a school about 5 minutes away, but the match would end at 4.30pm. As it usually takes ten minutes or so to get Ernie to the car, this looked like a tricky mission.
I could have opted to wait at the school for Phoebe to come back in the bus, but thought that might be trickier.
But I rushed him away from his friends, got him in the car and put the postcode in my sat nav. The sat nav took me to something that definitely wasn't a school and there was no sign of one around the dead end road I was in. I was about 15 minutes late.
I looked at my phone and saw that the school was on the other side of the main road. I turned round, fought my way across the traffic and drove into the school. It was pretty much empty and the gates to the field were shut. I saw a caretaker who told me that the cricket had finished at 3. That couldn't be right. Had I got the details this wrong?
I wasn't too worried. I doubted that the teachers would have left Phoebe to fend for herself or that she would have attempted the three mile walk home. But why had no one said anything when I was at their school.
I raced back to their school, expecting to see her waiting, annoyed, at the gates. But she wasn't there and reception wasn't answering the phone. A teacher came out and I said I was looking for Phoebe and she said she was going to see everyone now. I assumed she was driving somewhere (had I gone to the wrong place altogether?) but she walked up to the school field. It had been a home game.
It was just finishing (late) so Phoebe knew nothing about any of this, except she knew I thought I was picking her up somewhere else and hadn't tried to get a message to me to let me know I was wrong. I was sure that they'd said it was away and that I'd got the school address off the email link. When I clicked it when I was home the link now said it was a home match. Had it always been? Surely not. Was I going mad? I'd been emailing one of the teachers about how I might be late cos I had to pick Ernie up. Surely they would have thought I was crazy. It was a 30 second walk.
But wait, the email link had definitely asked if I was going to pick Phoebe up from the match or let her get the bus back to the school. Had they changed the details during the day and not told me? And if so why was I the only parent who seemed to have made this error?
I have no idea, except for the fact that we are definitely living in the Matrix and there's no way I am a senile idiot who read what I wanted to read.
Once again, my children were both safe - at least until they got into the car with someone with clear memory and comprehension issues.
Had I been punk'd? Why did no one come out to tell me I'd been punk'd? Perhaps my whole life is a punk. Perhaps they will only come out right at the end. In which case, good one, I thought it was all a bit off, but I went along with it and now I feel like a real idiot.
