is anyone out there???

Stealth and yoga.

At Walmart today there was a little boy wandering around. I was just about to ask him if he was lost when a man walked over to him first. "Are you lost?" he asked the little boy. "My mom is here but now I can't find her," the little boy replied, his lip trembling. The man asked if he could help him find his mom, took his hand and off they went.

Huh? Had I just witnessed a child being abducted? What if he walked right out of the store with the little boy? And I didn't even have a very good description of him! So that was when I started following them. Very covertly. He was wearing a black jacket, black t-shirt, blue jeans and a black overcoat. It was the coat that first made me suspicious. Creepy guys wear trench coats, right?

They wandered around the produce area and I was getting worried. Why didn't he just take the boy up to the front counter to have his parents paged. I mean, that's what someone who wasn't planning on abducting a child would do.

I needed to get a little closer. His eyes were brown, he had long brown hair pulled back into a pony-tail. I just couldn't gauge his height!

We had veered back around towards the front registers just as I got next to him to determine how tall he was. Taller than me. I'm not really very good at this.

As he approached a cashier to tell her about the child, I sighed with relief. The pressure was off, I no longer had to figure out his shoe size. I turned around and to my surprise and horror, bumped right into the creepy dude.

"Sorry," I apologized. "Are you following me?" he asked.

"Well that depends," I stammered. "If you were going to kidnap that boy, then yes, I was following you." Awkward pause, so I continued. "But since obviously you aren't, then no, I'm not following you."

He shook his head. "The boy was lost, I was only trying to help him find his mother. He said they were looking at apples and then she was gone."

Oh, right. That would explain the tour of the produce section. I gave a sheepish grin, apologized again and started to walk away.

"So what would you have done if I was trying to kidnap him," the man challenged.

"I know yoga," I tried. He laughed. "No really," I warned him as I went into the warrior pose. Which I guess isn't as intimidating as I thought. He laughed harder and reached into his pocket.

No way. I just knew he had a gun. I couldn't believe that this was how my life was going to end. I was going to get shot. At Walmart. I stood there frozen. Just like in my dreams I couldn't scream or run away. I was paralyzed.

"It's okay," he replied pulling his ID out of his jacket pocket. He was a Walmart employee. "You can stop cringing," he told me, "and thanks for the laugh." He walked away, still laughing and shaking his head.

So even though I need to learn some new moves and I'm not as stealthy as I thought I was, I guess it turned out to be an okay day.

The boy found his mother. And I didn't die in Walmart. Yes, overall it was a pretty good day.