Nate's a smart kid. Not a smooth criminal by any stretch, but a smart kid. When he was somewhere between two and three (somewhere around the time of the hopping vibrator incident), he escaped from the apartment in the very early morning. I say 'very early' meaning 'sometime before noonish'.

We lived in a third floor apartment that looked down onto the playground. Nate was always wanting to go there -- any kid wants to go to a playground, you know. There was a big slide and swings and teeter totters, but there was also a lot of broken glass out there. It just wasn't a really nice place and I wouldn't take him there very often.

So this particular morning I was sleeping in. My bedroom door was just a foot or two from Nate's bedroom door and we slept with both doors open so I could hear him when he got up. Usually. This time he was unusually quiet. I don't know how long he was up before I started coming around to realize he was in my doorway saying, "Don't get up, I'm just changing my socks." 'Okay,' I thought. I turned over. I shut my eyes again. I realized I felt a cold breeze in my bedroom. That didn't make any sense unless the front door was open -- it was February, after all. And then I really heard what he'd said. "Don't get up...I'm just changing my socks." Huh? What the heck was he changing his socks for? And why didn't he want me to get up? For crying out loud...usually he couldn't wait to get me out of bed. I was just sitting up when I saw him go running past my door wearing nothing but a diaper and a pair of socks. By that time I was fully awake and I yelled for him to stop, but it was too late. I went into the living room at a full run just in time to see him disappearing out the door.

Granted, I was an adult and he was a little kid, but he had an advantage over me in the speed department. I, being in a huge great hurry, had left my glasses laying beside my bed and could barely see. I ran out of the house in a loose gown - no shoes, no bra, and no glasses. And a ferocious case of bed head. By the time I got down the stairs, all I could see of Nate was just a little bit of tannish skin and a bright white dot of diaper bouncing along through the parking lot. It was a big parking lot and I was terrified he was going to get run over. I chased him probably about 150 yards, weaving through parked cars, before I caught up with him.

All that happened so fast that I didn't really figure out until I was on the way back to the apartment with Nate tucked firmly under my arm why exactly he was changing his socks. He'd gone out to the playground before I woke up wearing just his diaper and socks and the cold, damp ground got his socks all muddy. He was coming in for a fresh pair. It was the middle of February, probably 34 degrees outside. He didn't bother to find a shirt or pants, but he wanted to have clean dry socks for playing outside. Like I said, he's a smart kid.

I had to leave the couch pushed in front of the living room door at night for the next two weeks or so because Nate kept waking before me and trying to get out again. There's no coming between a boy and the playground sometimes.