Quintessential Kate

We were driving home from Milwaukee today when my phone rang. The caller ID says it's Kate. It was one of those phone calls that makes your parental heart lurch. A sobbing child on the other end, a bad connection so you can't fully understand what she's telling you and you are trying to pick out the details while your mind shifts into "fix it, action mode."

All from hundreds of miles away.

If you're a parent you will understand my next observation.

I can judge the gravity of the situation by how quickly the daughter on the other end becomes annoyed. The best case scenario in a sobbing kid phone call is that the winds will rapidly shift to the kid being annoyed because I am too stupid to understand what is being said in between the sobs and static.

Kate actually has a pretty good temperment in these things and wasn't too short about my failure to immediately comprehend. I think Kate is used to being in the sort of situations that simply defy normal experience so she knows it's going to take me a few minutes to get up to speed.

She was driving on the interstate, heading to Indianapolis to take her state board exam, when the back bumper of her car ripped off the car and landed in the median. Just blew off. No accident, no bump, just ripped off her car in the wind. No one was harmed, but she had no bumper or license plate on the car now.

What??

She hits the high points again and adds that she can't be late for that exam. After talking for a few minutes, Kate is much more calm and is turning around to see if she can retrieve at least the license plate if not the whole bumper. She calls a little bit later, once again headed toward Indianapolis and her exam.

"Did you get your license plate?"
"Yes. And the bumper."
"Is the bumper in your trunk?"
"No, I couldn't get the plate off it and it wouldn't really fit in my trunk. It's in my backseat. And my front seat. If I get pulled over for not having a plate on the back, I'm just going to point to it and tell the cop that I did the best I could do."

I think she's safe. No one could make up this kind of stuff.