MARCO!....POLO?

My fifteen year-old daughter, Alicia, got invited to a movie party at a friend's house the other night. She was excited to go and decided to ditch the rest of the family, who were going up to the park, where the town was showing their own movie. I was impressed that Alicia at least was responsible and handed me the address of her friend and a phone number as she ran out the door to catch a ride with another friend. I, in turn, set the address aside without looking at it, as my wife had mentioned that she would pick her up after it was over.

Can, I say, right up front that 15 is the weird, awkward age for parents. Your teenager wants to do everything that totally irresponsible teenagers want to do but don't have a driver's license to accomplish it. So, the parents end up driving these critters around, essentially making us accomplices to everything that they do.

Well, anyway...After our park movie was over, Jenny graciously volunteered me to go pick up Alicia from her party. So, being the adorable hunk of burnin' love that she refers to me as, I headed off to pick Alicia up. I hurried home and grabbed the address that she left and headed toward the opposite end of the valley. When I looked down at the address I suddenly realized that the address did not make sense. The Northing and Easting of the address did not match up with the town that she had listed on the paper. But, being the intelligent genius that I am, I noticed that if I swapped the north and east around, it did fit the town. So I drove to that address. I arrived at the location and there was not a home there. I criss-crossed the entire town, arriving at the same conclusion that the house was simply not there.

I realized then that I was in a little dilemma. It was after 11:00 p.m., well after the time that reasonable people make house calls on total strangers, plus I also realized that I was more of an idiot than a genius because I left my cell phone at home. So, I saw a family pull up to a house near by and I thought to myself, what a perfect opportunity. I could go and catch them as they were getting out of their car and it wouldn't be that much of an inconvenience for them. It wasn't like I was going to be waking them up or something.

What I didn't realize was that I was down a long country road and when someone who is sitting in a car suddenly comes up to you, as if they were waiting for an opportunity to attack you, it might not go over so well. Well, the husband and wife got out of their car and when they saw me coming, they took a defensive position and I thought that I was about to be maced. To make matters worse, I could smell the alcohol on the husband's breath at twenty paces. After breaking the ice of the initial part of the conversation, they ended being quite friendly, but nonetheless hadn't a clue where this address was, though, it should have been right next to their house.

I then had a strange thought that maybe this home was in the wizarding world and I was just a mere muggle not knowing how step through some warp to get to Hogwarts. I then went to plan B. I dug up $.50 in change in the car and made it over to the nearest pay phone. Alicia did leave a phone number. So, I called the number. After, the parent who answered, not quite knowing it my daughter was at his house and then searching for 9 minutes of my 10 minute pay phone call, Alicia finally came on the phone. She was excited to hear from me and wanted to tell me about all of the fun things that they done at the party. I eventually got her to turn the conversation to the topic of how and the heck was I going to find where she was and I only had about 30 seconds left of the call to accomplish this. I first gathered that the address was correct, but the town was wrong. ok. We were getting somewhere. Secondly, no one at the house could figure out how to give me directions on how to get there. So, I just said as my time on the phone ran out, I am heading to this address and try and look for me when I come.

I drove to the new town and headed into the hills to where this address was. Dang. Hills and address do not go together. Brigham Young , in his wisdom, made everyone live on flat ground with 5000 foot wide streets in a grid pattern for a reason. For him it was so he could find his wives, I guess. Dang again. If only I had brought my GPS, this would be a cinch. So. Now I was faced with locating a physical address on hilly roads that went every where, with driveways that did not list any address on them, and driveways that were at least a 1/2 mile long. If only people would get along a little bit better with their spouses so that they didn't have to live so dang far away from everyone else so they wouldn't hear them fight with each other.

So, I started to methodically drive up and down every dark windy driveway in the general area that this address should cover, hoping that when whoever came to the door, wasn't wielding a shotgun, but would be in fact my daughter. I made the driveway circuits several times, successfully not being shot at, but at the same time not finding my daughter. I was now about to plan xxx, and it was now well past midnight.

I almost lost hope and came to the conclusion that I would just head home and hope that the remaining children would decide not to have friends or get their drive's licenses before they got any friends. I decided to drive down one last driveway that I had been down several times before. I parked in the driveway for a few minutes and no one came out, so I dejectedly started heading back down the driveway, thinking that I had one less mouth to feed. When all of a sudden, in my rearview mirror, I saw the porch light flick on and off.

I had at last found the prodigal.