His mysterious ways

Tomorrow is the last day before the Christmas break at school.

Today there was a dance - during school hours.  Why it wasn't tomorrow, along with the band and chorus concert that was earlier in the week - who knows - but today during last hour was the dance.  I must have drawn the short straw, because I had duty on the dance floor.

Just shoot me.  Tomorrow night at my 8th grader's Catholic school, there is a dance.  I am all for being an involved parent, and I am there a couple of mornings a week in all kinds of weather helping in the car-rider line, but I will be dropping dear child off tomorrow night and hoping that I stay awake long enough to pick him up at 10:00.  I would rather unload cars in the freezing rain than chaperone a junior high dance.

But today I didn't have a choice.  The music sounded like dump trucks running into each other over and over again, and the volume was painfully loud. We walked around with our fingers in our ears.  Next time I will bring ear plugs.  Seriously.  And the things that one sees on the dance floor.... oh my!

About 45 minutes into the misery, my cell phone began to vibrate.  First with a number I didn't recognize.  (I don't answer those during school.)  Then with my sister-in-law's.  Then my husband.  Then the voice mails started coming in. I excused myself from the frenetic madness that passes as a dance to see who had died. 

My dear high school son had missed the bus!  First time all year he's missed it in the afternoon.  Mother-in-law couldn't find her keys, and dear husband was out of town, so that left only me to go get him.  Darn!

When he got in the car, I told him "thank you" (for rescuing me from dance duty).  He knew I had lost my mind.

I asked how it happened that he had missed the bus, and he launched into a story, "Well it began 3 months ago...."  Something about a locker that wouldn't open, finally getting someone to open the locker today at the very end of the day, and I don't know what else.  Anyway, what began three months ago, finally came to a conclusion today causing him to miss the bus while I was chaperoning  a middle school dance.  How great are God's ways!