Moral Dilemma

This will possibly be the longest journal on a blip I've ever done or ever will do, but this has been the longest 24 hours I've had in a while---and all over a teddy bear named Parker...

We were in charge of the beloved classroom teddy bear named Parker for the last five days (longer than usual because of a holiday & the fact that they only meet at preschool 3 mornings a week). Our job is to journal everywhere this teddy goes (I believe I mentioned this in the earlier blip this week). Well, we had finally arrived at Day 5 with Parker after a very busy week. At bedtime, I was finishing Parker's journal about his final day with us. My tired preschooler casually asks "Where's Parker?" while already dozing off to sleep. My heart skipped a beat. I frantically comb the house and the van looking for Parker. He is nowhere to be seen! The last time I had remembered seeing him was at gymnastics. I had put him in Landon's cubby at gymnastics several times being concerned that Parker wasn't going to survive the flips into the foam pit & jump house before he had to return to preschool. The last time I put him in the cubby was because Landon had him under his lion sweat suit pretending he was pregnant. Then I received two important phone calls while at gymnastics and got distracted and couldn't remember if we took Parker home. I had busied myself the rest of the day with 4 little boys to care for and with putting together the photo montage of Parker's experiences with us, that quite frankly, I had put Parker out of my mind.

Finding out he was missing, I then called the gymnastics place about 4 times hoping someone would pick up, knowing that it was probably closed but that most likely someone was still there cleaning up. Then I sent my poor husband across town to try to knock on the doors to the gymnastics place. I knew the likelihood that they would open the glass doors to 6 foot guy pounding on the doors saying all he wanted was a teddy bear was slim to none. I received the dreaded phone call from my husband that it was already closed & I knew they didn't open until AFTER school started the next day. Even then, I wasn't guaranteed that I could trust that Parker was still there.

These children LIVE for their chance to have this bear the VERY next school day. The teacher reads the journal of his adventures with each family aloud to the class while looking at the photographs and the kids ANXIOUSLY await whose name will be called as the Very Important Person who gets to take Parker home that day!!! I hadn't recalled any family having ever misplaced this much-loved bear in my whole history of that preschool---and I had two other children that went there! My guilt grew as I flipped through this special journal with photographs of these children cuddling in bed with Parker, reading a book with Parker, going grocery shopping with Parker, and so and so on. So then I knew I had to take matters into my own hand and the plotting began.

When my husband called to say the place was closed, my mind raced. I remembered that Parker was made by 'Animal Alley' which was a Toys R' Us brand. I looked online and saw that bear is still carried by them. I quickly called him back and pleaded that he make it to Toys R' Us before they closed and search the shelves for a Parker 'twin'. Then he asked "Are you sure about this?" I responded "No" with backup plans in mind, feeling that I was involved in something comparable to the assassination of the President. He arrived there 10 minutes before store closing & found that they had two Parker Doppelgangers left. He arrived home with one of them. In the meantime I called the preschool teacher with no luck...her phone went straight to voicemail. I was going to inform her of our grim circumstances & ask her if she could hold off the Parker journal reading until the gymnastics place opened. That might buy me the time I needed so I could sneak in and switch out the real Parker for the temporary twin if Parker was located. Not being able to get a hold of her, I tossed and turned all night thinking of whether I could tell an 'untruth' to a whole class of preschoolers. They knew me as Miss Tonya when I worked in that classroom last year. And how could I think of involving my son's innocent preschool teacher who has become my friend in this scheme? I even had to consider whether I should make this new Parker look old by dirtying up his bow and fur...after all, I had plenty of pictures of what the old Parker looked like. I just didn't know if I, being a Sunday School Teacher, could live with this. It brought back the nightmares of receiving the skeletal respiratory-infected class hamster over the school break a few years back and being worried that we were going to be THAT family that let the class hamster die (luckily, although it was my son who found Fluffy the Hamster dead in class 2 morning later, it wasn't at our home). My only solace was the proof that we were responsible bear-caregivers for the whole five days leading up to the dreadful event. The pictures, after all, were carefully placed in the journal prior to the realization of his disappearance.

I mean, really, what was I going to do---file a Missing Person's Report if no one had turned him into Lost and Found? After all, not everyone in this world is honest. I felt like I myself was becoming dishonest each minute the plot thickened. The person who found Parker might have thought Parker would be a great new friend for their child and had taken him home. I had decided when I went to bed that I was just going to go to preschool early and have a discussion with the teacher & she could help me decide what we should do. I would have to involve her in my masterminding, unfortunately.

I woke up with dread for the day ahead, showered & started breakfast. Then I get a text from my brother-in-law at exactly 6:28 am that read "Did you put the new Parker in the garage? I saw a bear in there on the chair next to the garage door remote I use to close the door." I run out into the corner of the garage, and low and behold, there is precious Parker sitting on the chair next to the lawnmower. I walk into the house and my 11-year-old son is eating breakfast and casually says "Oh, that's right, I was telling Landon how to use a lawnmower yesterday. Now I remember him putting the bear there after you picked us up from school." I had to slowly walk away before I exploded. Could he not have remembered that after I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off LAST NIGHT!!!

My preschooler was excited about the idea of getting to keep Parkers twin. After which my frugal husband and I had to have a phone conversation and he commented "Oh, good, now I can take the new bear back to the store!" Sorry, no such luck honey, Landon has already named his new bear. As we were darting out the door to the boys' schools to try and make it on-time, I remembered it was also Preschool Sharing Day. Oh crud! I ask "Landon, what do you want to take for sharing today?" His reply is "I want to take Parker's twin!!!" Since I had already barely dodged that bullet and wasn't up to the explanation of why Parker now had a twin brother, my response was something along the lines of "NOOOOO WAAAAAY".