Crimes and Punishments

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If someone does something wrong, they should be punished, right? I mean, that’s what I tell Bug all the time: “If you make the wrong choices, you don’t get to do fun things.”

The Agent was naughty last week.

Here’s what happened. Bug has ballet at 6 pm on Thursdays. The Agent gets off work at 4:30, I get off work at 5. So, at 4:30, The Agent called me and asked what the plan was.

“Well,” I said, “I’ll pick up the kids from daycare. I’ll drop Bug off at ballet and then BK and I will pick up dinner. I’ll pick up Bug after ballet, we’ll meet you at home, we’ll all have dinner.”

“That means we won’t have dinner until like 7:30,” The Agent answered. “So how about this. I’m leaving work right now. I’ll pick up the kids and meet you at the Subway by the ballet studio. We’ll all have dinner, then I’ll take BK home and you can take Bug to ballet.”

That sounded wonderful. It was going to save me like 30 minutes of drive time.

So, I got off work at 5 and got to Subway at 5:15. The Agent and the kids weren’t there yet. Weird.

At 5:20 I texted him to find out where he was. No response.

At 5:25, I called and it went straight to voicemail. There wasn’t going to be time to eat, change, and make it to the ballet studio at this rate. I was beginning to worry. What happened to them?

At 5:30, I called the daycare. “Did The Agent come to pick up the kids yet?” I asked.

“No, they’re still here,” she answered.

Oh, God. He was supposed to have been there an hour ago. Something happened to The Agent.

I ran to my car and raced across town to get the kids, crying. I called the house phone. No answer. “Agent, you pick up the phone right now!” I sobbed to the answering machine. “You have to pick up. YOU HAVE TO PICK UP!”

I then redialed The Agent’s cell phone over and over again, as I sped through traffic.

I had almost reached the daycare’s house when my phone rang. It was The Agent.

It was 5:45.

My first reaction was relief. He was ok.

Then intense anger.

“I’m going to kill you!” I cried. It’s doubtful that The Agent could even understand what I was saying, since I was crying so hard.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” The Agent said. “I started talking to someone in the parking lot at work and I completely lost track of time. I thought it was only 5 minutes and I looked down at my watch at it was 5:35. I couldn’t call you right away because I found out my phone was dead, so I plugged it in and had to wait until it was charged enough to call you.”

More incoherent crying on my end.

The Agent met me at the daycare, he got BK, and I got Bug. She changed in the car while I raced back across town to the ballet studio. We were a few minutes late, but luckily the class before hers ran late, so they hadn’t even started yet.

Bug and I came home after ballet and ate the dinner that The Agent had brought home. He apologized some more. I didn’t have anything to say to him.  I had been scared. I was hurt.  And now I was fired up.

But, after a few days, I kind of blew it off. He messed up, he’s sorry, let’s move on. There’s really nothing else to say, right?

Is there? Should he be punished? I believe he SHOULD be punished, but I believe HE should be intelligent enough to realize he’s wrong and punish himself. We don't tell each other what we can or can't do, but we believe in respecting each other, and treating the other the way we would want to be treated.

It’s possible that I am overreacting because I had such a scare. My life is nothing without The Agent. But he had to go through the pain too, knowing that he hurt me. Perhaps that's punishment enough.

Thoughts?