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"  I didn&amp;#039;t want to be the mother who called the police. And yet, there I was, running through the mud in the woods at the end of our street, alternating between screaming my son&amp;#039;s name and dialing 9-1-1 on my cell phone. My husband and the father of the other boy who was selling popcorn door-to-door with my son didn&amp;#039;t seem as worried as I was, but they didn&amp;#039;t tell me not to call the cops, either. In the end, though, I wondered if I&amp;#039;d done the right thing. When they started out from my driveway, there were three of them, my boys and their friend, all in Cub Scouts uniforms and carrying sign-ups sheets featuring a wide array of popcorn for sale. I&amp;#039;d told my kids to limit their canvassing to houses where we know our neighbors along the one-mile loop just past our house. &amp;quot;I sold Girl Scouts cookies on my bike on a cold March day in 4th grade all by myself,&amp;quot; I explained to the father of the other boy. &amp;quot;I wound up with frostbite on my hands. You&amp;#039;ll see. It&amp;#039;ll build character,&amp;quot; I said, as I watched the boys head down the street together. I went into my house and took a nap. When I woke up an hour later, I heard my older son coughing, so I assumed that all three boys had come home. But when I went downstairs, I discovered that two of the boys had decided to keep on selling. I admired their entrepreneurial spirit, and went to check my e-mail. That&amp;#039;s when I stumbled upon an article about new arrests in a 30-year-old case in the murder of a girl who was selling Girl Scout cookies. &amp;quot;Which way did they go?&amp;quot; I shouted to my son. Then I called the father of the other boy. &amp;quot;Are they there?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; he answered, sounding worried. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going out to look for them,&amp;quot; I said. I drove around the loop, but I couldn&amp;#039;t find them, so I called home. My son said that his brother and their friend had gone in a different direction, so I drove down that street, a dead-end, slowing down to check front doors along the way. It was drizzling, so not many people were outside, except for a contractor working in someone&amp;#039;s driveway and some kids on bikes. I called home and told my husband that I couldn&amp;#039;t find the boys, so he got in his car to meet me on the dead-end street. The other boy&amp;#039;s father agreed to stay home in case they returned. My husband said that one of the neighbors on that street had seen them a half-hour ago, but the contractor said he never saw them walk back his way. I headed into the woods, repeating to myself a statistic I&amp;#039;d heard from &amp;quot;How to Live Dangerously&amp;quot; Based on calculated odds, &amp;quot;It would take 186,000 years to be abducted by a stranger.&amp;quot; But &amp;quot;5,300 people a year are injured by flowerpots.&amp;quot; And yet I never worry about my flowerpots. My phone rang. A neighbor said that her son and a couple of friends had been in the swamp at the end of my street earlier that week. So I got in my car and drove there while my husband continued to patrol the roads in his car. The other father started calling around the neighborhood. I parked my car at the end of the street and traipsed through the mud in the woods. As I passed by a pile of empty beer cans, I thought, I&amp;#039;ve really got to stop watching &amp;quot;Without a Trace.&amp;quot; I shouted my son&amp;#039;s name, but no one answered. That&amp;#039;s when I panicked and called the police. Oddly, it never occurred to me that the black bears that wander our neighborhood hadn&amp;#039;t started hibernating yet. I was too busy thinking about that Girl Scout in the news story. My boys know what to do if they see a black bear. Do they know not to go inside someone&amp;#039;s house?, I wondered. The police agreed to meet me at the end of the street, but while they were heading there, the other boy&amp;#039;s father called. Turns out that our Cub Scouts had sold $164 worth of popcorn, and were going for $200 up a street where we&amp;#039;d hadn&amp;#039;t thought to look for them. When he found our boys, they were selling popcorn to one of our friends, who praised them for being &amp;quot;true Cub Scouts&amp;quot; by hiking all the way to her house. The boys, we parents and the police met in our driveway. We lectured the kids about letting us know where they&amp;#039;re going, but I worried that I&amp;#039;d worried too much. Maybe we should have looked for them longer before calling the police. Maybe I should have thought about how far I&amp;#039;d ridden my bike to sell Girl Scout cookies, and searched a few more streets. Or maybe I should have just waited for them to come home. A friend who&amp;#039;s a homicide detective in a major city tried to make me feel better. &amp;quot;Man, I know that scared you ...until you found them safe. Then you laugh.&amp;quot; She said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s okay. We get calls like that a lot!&amp;quot; Now, about those flowerpots. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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