The Hunt for Beff

Thank you all for your concern over Monday’s first day of school post. Luca ended up fine. Great even. He loves school and excitedly bounds to class to play with a child named “Hawk.” I think it’s a safe bet to assume there will be multiple Hawk-related HamannEggs posts forthcoming.

Oh, and I’m still a mess over it in case you are wondering.

But I wanted to turn the Wayback machine to the Sunday before school started. The whole family visited Maggie Daley Park. Maggie Daley Park is a 20-acre public park in the Loop community area of Chicago. It is near the Lake Michigan shoreline in northeastern Grant Park where Daley Bicentennial Plaza previously stood. Thanks Wikipedia!

It’s this kid Shangri La with lots of climbing things and water things and some of the most dangerous slides I’ve ever seen. As I watched child after child ejected from these metal rifle muzzles, I wondered if Maggie Daley secretly hated children and asked for 14,000 ankles be twisted in her memory. But Wikipedia set me straight. She loved children.

About halfway through the day, we watched a father walk around the park calling out his son’s name with increasing panic. I can’t remember the kid’s name, but it was one of those names that sounds like a normal name, but is slightly exotic. Like Luca. Let’s call him “Beff.”

Anyway, Beff’s dad was getting frantic, so a group of parents, led by Diana, offered to search for him. Beff’s dad said Beff was wearing a red shirt and yellow Crocs. Crocs and a t-shirt, huh? Should be no problem finding a child with that outfit.

Diana and I split up and each took a kid for the hunt. I got Luca and he couldn’t really understand why we volunteered to find the kid.

“Because we’d be heroes. Don’t you want to be a hero?”

Luca agreed that being a hero would be pretty great. So we raced off to be the first to find Beff. We searched everywhere. The big wooden boat. The other big wooden boat. Luca scrambled into every nook and cranny calling out “Beff! Beff!” We scanned for red-shirted children. We combed the lawn for yellow Crocs.

After a fairly thorough search, we decided to go find Mommy and Elijah. And in classic Three Stooges style, we ran in opposite directions. I whirled around and lost sight of Luca for a brief moment. “Beff!  I mean Luca!” I shouted.

Luckily, I spotted Luca being ejected from a slide and scooped him up. I was about to lecture him about irony when we saw Beff in Beff’s dad’s arms. Beff’s dad was holding him tight and would never, ever let him out of his sight again.

Just then Diana arrived. She gestured to Beff’s Crocs, which were green instead of yellow.

“We would’ve found him if Beff’s dad told us the right color Crocs,” Diana said.

“And then we’d be heroes,” Luca added.