Well Then, Yes

My daughter wants to sleep over at a friend.  This friend rarely ever seems to want to stay with us.  Well, OK.  What can you do?  My daughter wants to get away, once and a while and I understand.  Tonight, she mentions she’ll be sleeping over at a particular friend’s home.  “Sure, just be sure to give me her number so I can call her mom or her dad. “Call her mom.  Her dad’s out.  I’ll send you the number in Wechat.”

It was later that night, when I remembered that I was supposed to give this mom a ring.  My wife was out, and I was home alone with my little one.  Nine o’clock isn’t too late, is it?  Nah, certainly.  I gave the number a ring and a young woman answered in English.  I introduced myself, apologized for calling late and suggested I just wanted to check that the girls were there and that all was going well.  She answered “yes.” She said nothing more.  I felt obliged to fill the space and said something about her daughter always being welcome to sleep over at our home next time.  She again replied: “yes.”  “Well then, yes.  You have a good night.” “Yes.”  She repeated, to my ears nervously. 

Hanging up, I suddenly I began to wonder.  Was that one of the kids, just answering a cell phone, pretending to be a mother?  The person’s voice had sounded rather young.  They seemed jittery and almost on the verge of laughing.  She’d offered nothing meaningful to say.  I thought back to times when I’d slept over at someone ‘s house in high school and then headed down into New York City to see a concert.  What’s going on here?  And yet, this is Beijing.  Many, many parents speak English as a second language.  In the end, I just wasn’t sure.

My wife came home about twenty minutes later.  I mentioned my concern.  Not definitively, but rather as something amusing, and just a bit unclear. A different tempermant then mine, certainly she thought it all sounded like a hoax and immediately asked for the number, which I gave her. By now it was 9:40PM.  Arguably too late.  She called anyway and went through the same ritual I did.  “What did you think?”   “I don’t know.  All she said was ‘yes’.”  

My daughter texted, “why do you keep calling?”  A few terse text exchanges left us with her threatening to return home and us telling her to stay.  We made the call to believe her and to drop it.  But the doubt lingered regardless. 



Friday 8/10/18