The most ridiculously stressful day EVER. (Knock on wood.)

In addition to all the drama around this potential schedule change, I had two other incredibly disturbing things happen yesterday.

First thing in the morning I had this horribly awkward meeting. I don't feel I can go into what it was about specifically, but basically I had to sit there and explain to someone how they weren't doing their job, and list off all the reasons why, and let them defend themself, and then go over the evidence supporting my position AGAIN. Sososososo awkward. So that was a kickin' way to start the day.

But worse was what happened before third hour. I was doing hall duty when GLA (my grade-level administrator) walked up. "Do you remember the Charmer?" she asked.

Um, obviously I remember him. I looked at her. "Yeah....."

"Well, his new school called. He's missing. He didn't go home last night."

"WHAT???"

"They want to know if any of our kids might know anything, and I thought since kids will talk to you, maybe you can ask around ---" Before she was even finished talking, I'd grabbed the Charmer's two best friends who both happened to be walking by.

One, the Chowhound, already knew; the Charmer's brother had called him the night before when trying to find his missing sibling. But the Chowhound had no idea where the Charmer was. I pulled the kids into the library to talk to them while our teacher-librarian covered the start of my next class. The Charmer's other best friend, Motormouth, had the Charmer's new cell number, so he tried calling it to see if the Charmer would answer. Phone was disconnected. Great.

I asked question after question. Where would he go? Who else might know? Who might he call for help? Who might have seen him recently? We brainstormed names, places, possibilities. The kids texted, called, shared ideas. They were scared - really scared. I emphasized that we didn't know that anything was actually wrong, but that we needed to do everything we could to try to help. More names, more calls.

His counselor called me. I'd called her in September, just to check in on him. She'd left a message back that he was doing fine. Then three weeks ago, she'd called me, but though I called back several times and emailed, I never heard from her. At least she called in the crisis. I shared some info that the kids had told me.

An hour and a half later, they found him. Or I guess he found himself - he went home. Claimed he'd fallen asleep at a friend's house, hadn't woken up till 10:30, didn't know people were worried. Honestly, I don't buy that that's the whole story, but whatever. He's okay.

I'm hoping to get to talk to him at some point. When his counselor called, she said she'd told him that I'd like to talk to him. He was surprised, apparently. She asked if he wanted to talk to me. He said yeah, he guessed so. From him, that's pretty much a hell yes, so hopefully we can make that happen.

Oh, it was a fun twenty-four hours.

(Photo credit to Greg Westfall.)