You Can’t Miss Her

Last night I lost DemiGoddess the Elder in Super Target. One moment she was right there, then she said, “I’m going to look for some eyeshadow,” and she was gone.

In our usual (regular, average, non-super) Target store, this isn’t a big deal. It’s a smallish store, and we always run across each other eventually as we’re shopping. But Super Target is, as the name implies, super big. All the departments where I usually find her are in different places than they are in our Target, and they are    very        far             apart.

On my third loop through the store, I called her name in the women’s dressing room and even checked the bathrooms with no luck. Demi the Elder is well past the age of easy abduction. It’s hard to snatch and run with a 5'5" high-school freshman without drawing a considerable amount of attention. But even so, I started to freak out.

In desperation, I went to the guest services desk and asked the two women working there if they’d page her. They said they only do pages for children under age 11, but they could send a call out to the store's employees over their walkie-talkies. They asked me what she looks like.

I said, “She has dark, wavy hair. And she’s wearing a bright pink T-shirt that says ‘You Have Died of Dysentery.’ ”

I found Ms. Elder a few minutes later in the shoe department.