Being a first time parent, anxiety is a constant.

Yep. That’s one of the toughest times. You know you can’t follow them everywhere but you still want to so much. (Gusman).

Once, my daughter was working at a private school in Alexandria, VA and her fiancé, in the Nat’l Guard, had just been given three days leave he hadn’t expected. My daughter had made plans to visit her Dad (my ex) in Pennsylvania, but decided to fib about car trouble and go see Prince Charming in New Jersey instead. What happened next transpired in about two hours while my new husband and I were out having dinner.

Prince Charming met her at the gates where he was staying and they learned she couldn’t park on base because she didn’t have the car’s owner’s card. (Definitely my daughter.) Rather than pay exorbitant parking fees for three days, they found an abandoned veterinarian hospital and parked her car behind it near a patch of woods.

Less than an hour later, a police officer who took the word “patrol” quite seriously, swung around the back of the vet hospital and found my daughter’s car “hidden.” A few plate runs and phone calls later, they learned the car was registered in PA, and carried a parking sticker from Virginia. A phone call to my ex (registered owner) revealed she hadn’t come to see him because her car was lame.

Everybody got worried fast, bless their hearts. Nobody knew the prince was in the Nat’l Guard, so nobody called him or the Guard. Luckily for everybody but the kids, my daughter had left something in the car and went back to collect it, whereupon the prince, his car, and my daughter found themselves surrounded by a bunch of NJ cop cars.

The kids thought it was very weird because the officers were intent on separating the engaged couple. The Prince was both confused and concerned because he knew the Guard did not smile on Guard members drawing the attention of local law enforcement. The officers thought it was weird that the kids were so nervous, because the officers were suspecting that the Prince had encountered my daughter on the way to see her Dad, kidnapped her, forced her to cancel the trip to PA, driven her to NJ and then they had disappeared. Until they reappeared. She said that “eighteen different” officers kept walking her away from the Prince, asking her what relationship she had with the Prince and acted skeptical when she said they were engaged.

She asked if anybody had called her Mom, and was told her father had called me and left a voice message. The Prince told me that was when my daughter threw her hands in the air, burst into tears and cried out, “That means Mom’s halfway here.” (I lived 40 miles from Pittsburgh, so we had the east pretty well covered.)

I knew nothing until we returned from dinner. Messages blinking on the answering machine.

1. (My ex): do you know where she is?

2. (My ex): we can’t find her. Call me now.

3. A NJ officer, (my daughter crying in the background). Ma’am, I’m calling from NJ and your daughter said the first thing I should say is everybody’s okay!

My daughter called later, and said, “Don’t say what you’re going to say!”

“What am I going to say?”

“You know exactly. ‘That should teach you not to lie to your parents.’”

I only thought this all was highly amusing because I missed the heart-stopping terror parts.

oh yikes scary