Special Agent Super Spy

It became obvious to me today that I’ve been watching too many detective and spy shows. We dropped Jason off at work after lunch, and on our way back home, Simon spotted a tower crane and wanted a closer look. I looked back to see Ian already sleeping and, thinking Simon was probably needing a snooze too, offered to find a construction site (where my plan was to let Simon doze off watching the interesting-at-first-but-ultimately-soporific action). We found an excavator filling up a line of dump trucks near downtown—and a parking spot across the street. After about ten minutes, the first dump truck was topped off and pulled away to make room for the second truck. I realized that although I was growing bored with the repetitive scooping and dumping, Simon was riveted and not the least bit drowsy. I came up with a new plan: follow the dump truck! (I hoped that the drone of the road would put Simon to sleep.)

I pulled out of the parking lot and sped up just a little to catch up to the truck, which was already a couple of blocks ahead. Simon and I happily chatted about how neat it was to see the digger filling up that big truck and speculating about where the truck might be taking all the dirt. When the truck started down a road I had never been on before (part of the newly opened Salt Creek something or other near the UNL campus), I became both genuinely curious about where the truck was taking all that dirt and debris and a little nervous that it would turn into some super-secret industrial place where it would be obvious I didn’t belong. As we continued along the route, I got just ever so slightly carried away with the thought that maybe I had gotten myself into something bigger than simply following a truck full of dirt to a dumpsite: maybe, I thought, I had accidentally stumbled onto some crime boss’s elaborate coverup for his diamond smuggling/drug dealing/loan sharking operation and now I was following his enforcer when he was supposed to be re-hiding the rocks/smack/bodies. When he led me down a deserted road and jumped out to confront me would he believe that I was just a mom trying to get my kid to sleep or, failing that, learn about construction? Would he demand my iPhone and smash it to bits because he saw me snap a photo? Should I hide my phone in the seat and hope that the good guys find it and use my last texts to try to trace my steps and locate me and my boys? Would I instead be pulled over and hassled by a dirty cop on the mobster’s payroll? I tell you it didn’t help when the truck suddenly (and rather suspiciously) changed lanes right before a stoplight. I lost him right around 56th and Cornhusker.

Simon did, in fact, fall asleep sometime during the chase (high-speed it was not). I drove a while longer—to “solidify the nap” as we say—and hoped to find a place to park and pull out my library copy of Heat Wave, but sadly, he stirred just as I was about to pull over. “Mommy, where’s that dump truck?” he wondered. I told him that, as it turned out, we were not following the truck but rather the truck was following us and that Mommy, being a super stealthy ninja spy, lost the tail. He had no idea what I was talking about and changed the subject, asking if we could please find a steeeenky garbage truck instead.