Information booth

This morning, Tony put Sophia on a bus to Chicago.  She is visiting the Museum of Science and Industry with her Girl Scout troop.  I usually chaperone these things, but because I am chaperoning a Girls' Night Out lock in tonight, I couldn't go. 

I am pretty laid back about her going to stuff without me, but Chicago, on "Girl Scout Day", with 1500 other girls in green sashes, I got a little nervous about her getting lost.  Sophia is the type of kid that reads all of the placards in a museum.  She is NOT a hurrying type of person, which is wonderful about 85% of the time.  Great when she can spend hours in an art museum with her Grandma, not so great when I ask her to go get dressed, and I find her a half an hour later, in her pj's, on her bed, making shadow puppets out of her toes.

I just had these visions of Sophia disappearing into a sea of green, and her troop completely losing her, and she wouldn't even notice.  I asked her to please pay attention to where her chaperones are at all times, kind of a futile request, and she said that I was being "overprotective".

I remember saying the same thing back to my parents. 

I also remember going to the mall with my dad, and as a new reader, I stopped in front of a store called "Id".  Now I knew that wasn't a word, and I remember very distinctly looking for the big red letter that must have fallen on the floor.  After what was probably a minute or two of searching, I looked around for my dad, but he was gone.  He told me later that he had just gone into the store right next door, but instead of looking around for him, I went right down to the information booth, "in the center of the mall", (remember how they used to say that on the paging system?)

I remembered my dad telling me if we ever got split up, to go there.  I took the long walk there all by myself, down the escalators, everything.  The ladies' voice boomed over all of Northridge: "Bob Reitman, please report to the information booth.  Bob Reitman, please report to the information booth, in the center of the mall."

I hope Sophia doesn't find any words that she thinks are misspelled today...it's a long drive to Chicago's information booth.