Good Morning and welcome to another perfect July day!

While sitting in the office Wednesday morning, I saw a television commercial targeting parents of young children. The commercial showed a mother with a young child at a park. The mother puts her head down for a second and the child is gone. The panicked Mom looks around and doesn't see the child. The visual cuts to a white van driving out of the park. The Mom then reaches into her bag and pulls out some kind of child GPS tracker. You put one part on your child and the other part beeps when it's close. The tracker works fine in the commercial and the smiling boy comes out of the woods with a red balloon.
Now, I'm one to think we have enough gadgets in our pockets. We have cell phones, keyless car entry buttons, garage-door openers and everything else. Why get another gadget?
Then again... Meet Brendan.
He's 7-years old, a free-spirit and can be, well, a handful.
During dinner Wednesday night, we were talking about heading to the library for a puppet show. Brendan, as he's apt to do, finished dinner first, left the table and starting tumbling around on the couch.
You keep half an eye to make sure he doesn't run outside, then get back to eating or cleaning up or just resting.
There's still plenty of time for the puppet show, so we get ready to go, but there's no Brendan.
Everybody starts calmly looking around the house. We check the play room. We check the bathroom. We check his bedroom. His brother's bedroom. His sister's bedroom.
No Brendan.
We start yelling his name.
No Brendan.
We check around outside.
No Brendan.
We go back inside and yell his name louder.
No Brendan.
His mom, getting close to full panic mode, takes a quick ride around the block to see if he just sort of wandered.
No Brendan.
We yell louder. People are staring to stare at the house (or avoid it).
No Brendan.
Check the garage.
No Brendan.
Mom grabs the phone. Dials a 9.
"Hi Mom."
Huh?!?
There's Brendan. Big Smile. Starting to laugh.
"I was just playing hide and seek in this box."
It's not a game if nobody else is playing. Unfortunately, and a 7-year old is (hopefully) never going to understand this, but we live in a world where you quickly go from a playful search to thinking (believing?) the worst.
We are lucky. It was just a child playing around. Of course, our heads are another story.
Not to push a product, I (and everybody else in the house) know what this is like: