Three cheers for the unnamed angel at Target

There was a crisis this afternoon as the girls and I were out and about town. S. brought with her this Womans major league soccer tiger I bought when a friend and I went to see Washington United play back in 2004, after A. was born. Somehow I never seem to notice them bringing toys with them into the car when we go places. It's only when I have to convince them to keep them in the car that I even realize I've been had. On with the story. She has the tiger. Her "cat", and we're at Target. She was strapped into one of those two seater carts for most of our trip, so I was pretty surprised when she starts crying about her lost cat while we were looking at those adaptable potty seats. Because I just let her out of the cart a few minutes before, and she had the cat with her. I look around the cart and in my purse, nope, no cat. So now that I know that cat is, in fact, missing, we retrace our steps to look for it. Thank God that we hadn't hit many places at all! But it didn't matter. No sign of cat.

Meanwhile, as we look, A. is insisting that S. left the cat in the car. I kept telling her that I was pretty sure S. brought it in with her. We argue about that. Then we pay for our stuff and head to the car. I look around. No cat. So I toss our stuff in the back of the car and head back into Target. I thought customer service might be of help, so I stopped there. No such luck. I grab their hands and we start retracing our steps again. As we're passing the girls' aisle, this wonderful angel wearing a red shirt and a name tag which I forgot to look at, appears and asks if there was something she could help us find. "Well," I say. "Not really, unless you happen to come across a black and white tiger." She asks for a description and offers to help. I tell her where we went (at this point I'm dealing with S.'s shoe. She keeps crying about her shoe and I take it off to see if there was a rock or something). When I finish up with S. we head back toward the baby section and here comes this ethereal figure adorned in red, floating towards and waving a black and white tiger in her left hand. S. squeals, and I am in awe. I asked her where she found it, I mean, she came out of the very aisle we were in when the tiger was lost. And I looked. Twice. "Where a two year old would leave it." She replies as she hands S. her cat. I have an idea about what she meant by that, but I still cannot fathom exactly where she meant by that. But it doesn't matter, because S. is happy. And quite frankly, so am I. I have a sentimental attachment to that tiger. It can't exactly be replaced, especially since the WMLS folded. S. thanks her, I thank her profusely, and we leave.

I have since, tried to make it clear to S. that she CANNOT bring her toys with her when we go places. And I make a mental note to buy some kind of radar that will detect stow-away toys and beep very very loudly. It will have a robotic voice that says, "Warning! Warning! Stow-away in left passenger seat."

Something that will mount to the dashboard would be perfect.

And the moral of the story is- I must buy or invent that toy-detector. And most importantly that un-named savior-ess at Target is my hero. I hope that karma follows her in kind.