We went blueberry picking with a friend of the prince's yesterday. Himself, myself, the prince, his classmate, her little sister, their mom, and a babysitter who used to be one of their preschool teachers. We're all picking berries, as are many other families, the kids are running around and playing but not getting too far away, it was about 70 degrees and sunny, with a brisk breeze blowing—gorgeous. Nearby is a family with a kid who's about three or four and a toddler the dad is carrying, maybe 15 or 16 months, and we chided the prince for going and picking berries off the bush they were using; dad said oh, there's plenty to go around, and we said well thanks for being cool, but we do also want to teach him to, you know, be aware of other people. It was all very pleasant.
Ten or fifteen minutes later a little girl comes up the row looking between all the bushes calling "Come out, come out wherever you are!" She does not seem upset and takes absolutely no notice of any of the people she's passing, even as every single adult she goes by turns their head to watch her and wait to see if a more-grown person is with her. Doesn't appear to be. Finally I hand the blueberry basket to Himself and follow her; she's at the end of the row by the time I catch up to her, and who knows where she's planning to get to next.
"Hi," I said. "Do you know where your mom and dad are?"
"Yeah," she said, waving vaguely back down the row she'd just come to the end of. "Back there."
"Do they know you're all the way up here?"
"Yeah, I told them."
"Sounds like you're playing hide and seek," I said. "Who are you looking for?"
"My brother."
"Cool. Can I help you find him? What does your brother look like?" She tells me about how he has a lion on his shirt and he has curly hair. "Okay. Is he bigger than you or littler than you?"
"He's bigger than me. He's six."
Awesome. So there's not likely an even smaller lost child around here somewhere. That's something. "Why don't we go back this way to look for him," I suggested. "I bet he wouldn't have gone farther than this."
"Okay." Little girl happily turned back and started leading me back down the row, looking for her big brother between the blueberry bushes.
"What's your name?" I asked. She told me her name and spelled it, which was pretty impressive, I thought. She must have been about three, three and a half. I asked her brother's name, and she spelled that, too.
At this point, we're getting back to within earshot of where my family and our friends were picking berries, and I become aware my husband is calling to me and asking if the little girl's name is what she just told me her name was. He points even further back down the row behind him to where this kid's adults have been looking for her. "Hey," I say to her, "it looks like your mom's calling you, do you want to hurry back to her so she knows you're okay?" Little girl runs back to her mom, who practically faints when she sees her coming. I tell her the kid had been looking for her brother; mom says the brother had gone the other way, probably up the aisle in the middle of the rows, so he'd apparently kept the radius a lot smaller. The little sister had told her folks she was going to find him and then had just missed the turn and got much further away than anyone had intended. The mom hugs her girl and thanks me and back we go to the berry picking. The mother of the family whose blueberry bush my son had horned in on tells me if I hadn't followed the little girl when I did she'd been within seconds of doing so herself. (I'd taken the opportunity because I was the "extra" adult, the only one not directly matched up with a child precisely then, because our family had two adults and one kid and the kid was at that moment with his dad.)
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