Conversing with the deceased

When we first moved to St. Louis, I neglected to get a new cell phone number.  After several weeks, I had given the number to new friends, church members, utilities, and schools. 

Changing that number would have been a huge pain. 

So, for our six years there (and our one lone year in San Diego before that), I had a Boston area code. 

Which I loved. 

Except when no one would take my calls because they didn't recognize the number.  Or when I got wrong number calls from people on east coast time very early in the morning.  Or when I had the same conversations every week about where the number was from, and why I never changed it.

It drove me batty. 

As you can imagine, I planned to march my phone (and my children's phones) into the AT&T store within days of arriving so as not to make the same mistake twice. 

Which I did. 

Unfortunately, I made the misjudgment of assuming my teen/tween-age children could handle the errand with me. 

Within five minutes, Hannah was moaning and pulling on my arms because she was STARVING.   JUDAS.  STARVING!!!

Chase was single-handedly touching and manipulating every gadget in the store.  He was like a tornado, moving from one to the other, causing carnage in his wake.  It would not surprise me if he is the cause of why every display phone in the store now speaks Spanish and/or Mandarin Chinese. 

McKay just kept rolling his eyes and giving me THE LOOK.  You know it.  The one that says, "Mom, this is ridiculous and I will never forgive you the horror of this injustice."  It's a universal look and recognizable in every country on the planet.

Rather than risking therapy bills in the future, I wisely handed them my debit card and sent them to the burger joint around the corner.   

Once all the phone number changing had taken place, I headed out to find my children.  But before I pulled out of the parking space, I sent a quick text to McKay's new phone number.  Unfortunately, I misdialed and this hilarity with a stranger is what ensued.   

I'm betting that if I were somehow able to converse with this person's poor dead mother, she would commiserate with me on the traumas of shopping with children. 

Rest in peace, lady.   

And tell me heaven consists of solo shopping trips?