Leaving one behind...

Image of an empty road with autum leaves in the gutterCounting is not a particularly tricky skill for most. There are three junior recipe testers living in this house. We can count from one to three. And when it's all boiled down, one, two and three are the only numbers we need really.

Now, I do not like to incriminate the guilty in this instance. Suffice it to say that one of the more senior members of this family had a brief senior's moment which led to a significant miscount of juniors.

In short, one got left behind.

The weekend just gone held the usual array of social gatherings celebrating the coming of age for the under tens. We dutifully ferried juniors to their varied social engagements. One junior living in this household has yet to reach the age of receiving invitations of his own. He is, however, most pleased to attend the drop offs and pickups of his older siblings.

The drop off of one junior with a smaller junior in tow was achieved without hitch. The small junior returned home. At pickup time the youngest junior again accompanied the unnamed parent to pick up his brother from the party.

The parent supervised the party go-er's goodbyes and thank yous and together they walked back to the car. There was much discussion about how much fun had been had, the activities that had gone on and stories of general frivolity. And they hopped in the car.

Some time down the road the unnamed parent, and the junior there present realised that there had been another junior taken on this voyage. That smaller junior had hopped out of the car, as instructed, at the party. It appeared that he had failed to get back in.

His unnamed parent had declined to note that the number of juniors taken on the trip did not match the expected load count for the return journey. As the unnamed parent pulled over and did a u-turn, the phone rang.