Eri was off to her class, the last one before her final project presentation tomorrow. She's been staying late this week to work with her classmates. It was 14:50. Kenzo and Osamu told me they'd nap until 16:00. I had a meeting with a customer on Zoom from 15:00 to 16:00 so that was gonna work out just perfect.
But then at 15:15 it started to fall apart. I was doing my meeting downstairs at the dining table and I could hear noise upstairs from the boys' bedroom. Usually the noise goes away when they fall asleep, but the timing of this, twenty minutes into their nap time, had me worried. And my fears became reality.
Osamu came downstairs crying and talking at me while I tried to maintain eye contact with my client. I was doing my best to gesture to Osamu to go back upstairs in a way that wouldn't be visible to my webcam. Then Kenzo came downstairs and they were both upset and I had to excuse myself from my meeting for a moment.
I ordered the boys back upstairs for nap time until 16:00 but they weren't having it, and I had to get back into my Zoom call. I told the boys they could stay downstairs but they had to be super nice and quiet and if they did a good job then we'd have a special snack afterward. I excel at using extrinsic motivators.
But then it got worse.
The neighbor kids were outside, so the boys went out to the garden. They know they're not to go down the steps to the street without mama or papa present. Or at least they did know that. Before too long, out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kenzo and Osamu playing down in the street with the girl from next door. My meeting was coming to a close and my blood pressure was steadily elevating.
When I finally extricated myself from the meeting I ran outside, but there was no one in sight. Just then the girl from next door, who's eleven and the oldest of four and seems to have a level-headed sense of responsibility, appeared and told me the boys were at her house and that everything was okay and they'd be coming back in a few minutes.
I apologized. To an eleven-year-old. She politely said it's totally okay and don't worry.
I went back in and peeked out the curtains to see if our neighbor's curtains were open, but no luck. I couldn't see anything. I waited a little bit, checked my work messages to make sure no one was trying to contact me, and headed next door. The mom was expecting me and before I could begin to apologize for Kenzo and Osamu inviting themselves over when she's dealing with dinner and bath prep for four kids all by herself she said the boys should come over more often and gave us a bag full of cookies, crackers, and other assorted snacks.
When we got back the boys noticed a bunch of their toys were missing, as well as the TV remote control. I was quiet and went back to work so I could wrap up my day. The boys knew what was up. They didn't cry. Well, Osamu was tired and started a wild tantrum about building an airplane, but other than that we all knew there was trouble and why.
Obviously there was no special snack.
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