Evan Was Lost at Wal-Mart

Nothing would make a parent feel worse when he/she realizes that they may have lost their child. This happened to Daddy a couple of months ago when he took Olivia and Evan to Wal-Mart for some quick shopping and it became the most memorable Wal-Mart trip ever.

I have mentioned before that Evan tends to be indifferent to his surrounding when he walks as if he is in his own little world. It happened many times in the store that he would look at something while he was walking not realize someone was walking towards him. He would continue looking and walking until he bumped into that person if I didn't stop him in time.

Obviously that day was one of those days. After finishing their shopping, Daddy got into the checkout line with Olivia and Evan standing behind him looking at candy.  Daddy asked Olivia to get something from the front of the store.  Olivia did this and they began checking out their items. 

Afterwards, they were ready to leave but Evan was nowhere in site. They searched the checkout lines but he couldn't be found.  They got very worried and asked the greeter at the door and others in the area if they saw a little boy who was half-Chinese.  Meanwhile, Olivia was sent back to sweep the store, but she came back empty.  Daddy stayed in front, not wanting him to return and not find his parent when he wandered back.

When Olivia returned empty-handed after a second sweep, Daddy went to Customer Service and requested that they use the telecom but was informed that Wal-Mart no longer did this.  But they did send out a message to their associates via radio and things started picking up from there.  The supervisor came out and asked how old Evan was, what he looked like, where he was last seen in the store, what clothes he was wearing and what color of his clothes were etc.   Daddy and Olivia answered to the best of their ability although neither could remember exactly what clothes Evan was wearing. Focusing on the toy section, especially the Lego section, about 15 Wal-Mart employees went out searching for Evan through the entire store. A little Asian boy was unfortunate to be alone in the Lego section at the time and probably had ten people come up to him and ask whether he was Evan. This went on for over five minutes but Evan could not be found. Seemingly every place had been looked at except the parking lot.  Finally one of the Wal-Mart employees went outside. Soon Olivia arrived from a search with two Wal-Mart employees and they too went outside looking for him.

It seemed to take forever, but a number of minutes later Evan came bounding into the store, followed quickly by Olivia and a number of relieved Wal-Mart employees.

As best can be determined, when Olivia went to the front of the store, Evan apparently followed her but then followed who he thought was Daddy out of the store. However that was just a guy who has similar physique as Daddy and in no time out of the store Evan lost sign of him as well.  There, he suddenly found himself alone in the Wal-Mart parking lot without anyone he knew!  Just imagining him wandering around the parking lot causes my heart to tighten. [He almost got run over by a car at a parking lot in China many years ago. Again Evan was not concentrating on the road while he was walking and he was too small for the driver to see when he backed off from the parking lot.] That incident alone made me think that it is almost a miracle for any parent to bring up their children to 18 years old. So many accidents like this can happen.

Anyway, instead of going back to the store to look for Daddy and Olivia, Evan decided to look for the car instead since according to him, eventually "Daddy and Olivia would come back to the car to go home." "It took me one minute to find our car." He later on commented proudly. "I knew it was our car with Olivia's art work hanging in the back window." He then just sat down on the ground next to the car during those 15 heart wrenching minutes for Daddy and Olivia.

When I asked how Evan was acting when Olivia and two Wal-Mart ladies finally found him in the parking lot, Olivia said he just sat there by the car with his hands around his knees and didn't show any facial expression. He wasn't scared and didn't appear to be very excited to see Olivia again either. He looked more like he was bored waiting for them to arrive, which was what he told me later on. I think Granna is probably right, he probably didn't think he was lost; he was just bored waiting for his dad and sister to come back to the car so they could go home.