Shopping Fiasco!

I have heard of losing a child while shopping, but never a husband! We had been shoe shopping for Howard, but he didn't find anything he liked at this store. A granddaughter's birthday is coming up, so I told him I was going to look at girls' dresses, assuming he would browse around.

The dresses were quite cute, but I couldn't decide, going from one to another, putting them back and taking them off the rack again. I mused and considered for a long time, then gave up for fear a selection wouldn't fit, or maybe it would not be to a nine-year-old's liking.

I looked around for my husband, but I didn't see him anywhere. The aisles in the shoe department were empty, so I looked in Men's Clothing. No Howard. I walked around the store repeatedly, then asked the clerk to page him. She did, but there was no response.

Maybe he went for coffee at the Starbucks in the supermarket down the block, I thought, knowing he loves to sit and linger over a cup. Getting worried by now, I hurried to the grocery, even scanning the snack area and the salad buffet. He wasn't there.

Why couldn't I find him? He wasn't in our van parked in front of a Hallmark store. I went inside the store, and searched to no avail. Calling him was not an option, since I remembered he plugged in his phone to charge and left it at home.

Getting panicky, exhausted and almost in tears, I returned to the department store. A man was walking in my direction, and I said, "I have lost my husband in this store! Would you mind checking the restroom?"

"What does he look like?" he asked. I was flustered, but I described him, telling him that he wears glasses down on his nose.

"He's almost 80, but he doesn't look like it!" I volunteered.

"I think he's still in Shoes," the man, obviously a manager, said. "There's a chair back there."

I hurried to the back, and there, out of sight at the end of the aisle, sat my husband, slumped down and sound asleep with his cap pulled over his face!

He said he thought I knew where he was! Relief mixed with anger and fatigue flooded my eyes. I was exhausted and spent and just wanted to go home.

I felt like Mary in the Bible when she and Joseph found Jesus in the temple and her exclamation was something like, "Why have you treated us like this?"

Well, it was innocence on Howard's part and a jump to conclusion on my part, but it will be a few days before I go shoe-shopping with him again!