Answer your phone

"Next time you'd better be dead or in a coma, but that's the only reason I'm accepting for not answering our phones or pages."

This rant, directed at our daughter in the front yard of our home at about 10 pm last night, was also in front of her boyfriend (I guess you can call him that now) and his entire family.

Jennifer started to do her usual rebuttal, but then took one look at my face and, surprisingly shut up.

The beginning of this saga began about 3 hours earlier, when the young couple had gotten bored at the Kent STation offerings, and Anthony's mom decided to pick 'em up and take them out to a soccer game withe her in Tukwila.

Fine. But as the hour hand started to creep by 9 pm, and Jennifer stopped answering her texts. We began to worry and kick ourselves.

We hadn't asked for an ETA, but it was assumed it would be sometime around 9 pm. We also realized that we didn't have Anthony's cell, or know the name of his mom (remarried) or her cell. In other words, no way to track her down if we had to.

Gary was just putting on his shoes to go to said Tukwila soccer field, grumbling that our darling daughter would be sorry (after he found her alive) when he showed up, when finally the home phone rang. It was the awol daughter, saying she'd be home in 10 minutes.

So I sat out on the porch, (yes, I really did), and rehearsed by lines when the SUV pulls up. I give them my contact info, introduce myself and try not to sound too much like a crazy mom. And I must note, they did seem like a nice family. As you'll notice, Gary's not in the picture, he's gone to bed, knowing I'd do enough chewing for both of us.

Later, I explained to Jennifer that given this relationship was soo new (like last week) and we hadn't met the parents yet, she really, really needed to have the phone at hand, and not drop it in the bowels of her purse.You have 2 former cop reporters as parents, you'll just have to live with our natural paranoia, as she started to protest.

Otherwise, she was grounded next time when we text her 3x and call her 4, and no answer.

I could tell she was about to say something.

"One more word and you're grounded now."

Silence.