Things That Make You Go "WTF?" in the Night

Last night we got home around 7:00. Darkness had fallen while T-Hoe, The Pony, and Val spent 20 minutes in the McDonald's drive-thru line.

Conferences wrapped up at 6:00. The Pony was with me because...well...he doesn't have his driver's license yet. My mom used to run by school and pick him up on this conference day, so he had from 1:00 until 6:00 to lay around on her couch being treated like royalty, gorging on macaroni noodles and butter, soaking up her high-speed internet. Alas, we both miss her greatly.

Funny thing about missing Mom yesterday. You know how I haven't seen a ladybug since my sister the ex-mayor's wife and I cleaned out Mom's house in August, and found a pile of dried-out dead ones in her downstairs bathroom? And the last time before that was the two-week period in February when ladybugs accosted me at every turn, four times, to be exact. So...last night, a strange coincidence occurred.

Nobody comes to conferences anymore. The parents can look up grades online, and don't need to drop in and pick up a printout and visit with teachers. That is, if their kids don't owe several hundred dollars in lunch fees. Or even a dollar. The account gets locked until debts are paid. Which means those folks not paying certainly aren't coming in to try and talk to us. This isn't little kids. This is the big leagues, and parents pretty much let the kids run  things, and don't pop in or make an appointment to see whether Little Johnny is doing okay. Not a statement about our parents specifically. It's like that everywhere now, from what I hear at the teacher lunch table.

So...on Tuesday, I had two students stop by, both of whom had nothing to worry about. Two. From 3:00 until 7:00. There might have been a third, according to The Pony, who had popped in to warm some supper in my microwave. Unfortunately, we had departmental meetings, and I was down the hall for 45 minutes. Last night, there was one. She brought a mom and dad and baby sibling. Let the record show that after waiting all day, catching up on paperwork, these folks made it all worthwhile for Val by arriving at 5:50. Not a problem. We couldn't leave until 6:00.

That baby sibling was cute as a bug. About 8-10 months old, riding on his mom's hip, laughing and showing his gums, his downy blond head tilted back for a belly laugh. As we were exchanging pleasantries, Baby Sib started to fuss. "Here, I'll take him," said the pupil. She transferred him to her own hip. He leaned way back, in the way of babies who don't want to be still, and flailed at his nose with the back of his chubby hand. Pupil wrestled her spare arm behind his back so he didn't fall.

"What's that?" asked his mom. She leaned over and plucked some foreign matter from Baby Sib's nostril. "It's a ladybug! How did THAT get in there?" Baby Sib chortled at the absurdity, as I gawked in wonder. The mom flicked it somewhere in my room. Dead or alive, I don't know. I never found it.

But that's not the scary part of this story. After waiting so long to pick up The Pony's cheeseburger meal on the way home, darkness had completely fallen. The waxing gibbous moon hung over the long bridge spanning the big river as we turned off the county road.

"Looks like it's going to be dark getting the mail, Pony. Hope you don't hear MothMan." That used to make Genius all discombobulated. He was jittery getting the mail after dark, always hearing something rustling the dead leaves in the woods. I probably shouldn't have let him watch those Halloween specials when he was a young 'un.

"Eh." The Pony is more concerned about entities in the house than rustling leaves. When we got to our creek and the gravel road turnoff, he jumped out to reach his arm deep into EmBee and extract her innards. I saw him turn and look over his shoulder at the gravel road where we were about to enter. Again. He dug out the mail. A third time, he looked.

SOMETHING WAS OVER THERE!

I saw a light. A bright blue light, about the size of a golf ball. It moved. Bobbed. Came toward us. The Pony jumped in. "I heard something moving on the gravel!"

"I saw a light! We're out of here!"I turned onto the gravel. Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a man. He was moving along the side of a black truck. From the bed to the driver's door. I only glimpsed him, because it was dark, you know, with those trees shielding the moonlight, and the truck was black, and the guy was wearing dark clothes, and at the very moment I drove T-Hoe past him,

THE PONY TURNED ON THE DOME LIGHT!

"Thanks, Pony. I don't know what that guy was up to, but thanks for illuminating me with that dome light right as we passed him, just in case he was a murderer wanting to shoot somebody. I would have been the perfect target."

"Oh. Sorry. I wanted to see what colleges sent me mail."

"It's probably just that guy who used to cut through here after work, and dump his 12-pack of Natural Light into his cooler, checking you out with a flashlight. But I didn't see that carton thrown out. And it's way after get-off-work time. Not sure what he was up to."

Never a dull moment in Val's life. Except for 93.333333% of her conference time.