A Little Too Exciting Day

It turned out that showing my white skin was no problem at the pool. We ended up going to the subdivision pool because the other friend had something come up. It was great—not too hot, our kids played well together and we were the only people there, so I wasn’t shy about being the opposite of tan.

Around noon it started to rain and we were gathering up our things to go, when my friend L said, “We may have a problem. I think my key to the gate is in my car.”

You see, when we came in, the gates were open for the lawn guys and we just walked in without having to use her key. When the lawn guys left, the gate locked behind them. So there we were, the only people there, locked inside a very high metal fence.

We briefly tried to climb over the fence, but there was no way. She’d left her broken cell phone at home, and mine was in my car.

And it started to rain harder.

We gathered the kids under the clubhouse roof and tried to use the pay phone. It wouldn’t take change or let us make a collect call. Then L called 911, which did go through, but the lady didn’t want to send anyone because she said it wasn’t a real emergency. To us, it certainly felt real, because we didn’t know what else to do. We moms were staying calm, but in a weird, frozen-faced way, so that our five-year-olds knew something was up and were starting to get scared and cry. L called the dispatcher back and she sent the fire department out. All we needed was for someone to open her car (she had her car keys) and get the gate keys. Which was accomplished in about 1 minute. The firefighters were very nice and did not even make fun of us when we thanked them and apologized for making them rescue us.

On the plus side, Mr. Blue was excited about getting to see a real, albeit small, fire truck. Our relief was so great we decided to go through the drive-through at McDonald’s and go to L’s house to eat.

And now I need to go take a shower because I smell like sunscreen and sweat and a crisis averted.