This morning, I was abducted.

An interesting morning. Too bad none of the interesting events actually happened to me.

Stayed with my mother last night since she was home alone and under the weather. Woke up early and sank a kiss into my half-sleeping mama's melting cheek. Then I left. Got a bag of cheddar and sour cream potato chips at a gas station to provide tasty, albeit unhealthy morning sustenance. Sat in traffic sleepily. Sat in more traffic sleepily. Got to work to find all parking taken. With a disgruntled sigh, I circled the block a couple times until I found a parking spot that will probably eventuate in me getting a parking ticket. Then I went to work.

Apparently during all of this, my mother had fully waken up to see that I had left all my belongings (which I told her I'd pick up after work while she fluttered in semi-stupor). My poor mother, dishelved and confused, tromped around the small townhouse meekly calling out my name. She looked outside the lace-curtained window. She thought she saw my car outside (not mine, but my aunt's. Both taupe Toyotas, so it's easy to get confused). But there was no sign of me anywhere. She started to panic. She called my cousin and insisted that something horrible had happened. I had been kidnapped. Abducted. It was 7:51am in the morning and I was probably trapped in a Siberian death camp being tortured by saber-wielding sherpas.

My mom finally called me frantically, in a voice trembling with fear. "OHMYGOD YOU'RE ALIVE." An hour had passed since I had seen her, but imaginative histories of me wandering pants-less, teary-eyed, beaten and raped up and down Braddock Road had already taken their toll . "Please call Shannon and tell her you're alive. I called her. I was so worried."

I called my loving cousin and roommate. I laughed right into the earpiece, loud and incredulous. "Did you really think I'd been abducted? You really believed my mom?"

"I didn't know. Things happen. I thought maybe you went outside for a morning cigarette and never made it back."

"You don't sound like you were all that concerned."

"I was. If you were lying in a ditch somewhere, who'd pay the rent?"