Yesterday my son left for school at 8 o’clock as usual.
“Bye-bye, Daddy,” he said.
“Bye-bye,” I said. “Cross the road carefully.”
I locked the door behind him.
Twenty minutes later I started teaching an English lesson over the telephone. As my student was talking, I could hear somebody climbing the stairs to our house. I thought that it must be a postal delivery. Then I heard the handle of our front door turn. Whoever was there was trying to enter my home.
I was only half listening to my student now, in case I had to stand up and fight off this intruder.
In the end, I realized that it was my son coming home. My wife let him in and I returned to my lesson. “Has he forgotten his schoolbag or something?” I wondered.
After the lesson was finished I found out what was going on. Tokyo’s public schools were all closed yesterday, although it was not a public holiday generally. My son went to his school and couldn’t understand why there was nobody else there. Eventually he found one other student who had made the same mistake and they decided to go home.
How did my son manage to miss the information that his school was not going to be open? I am sure his teacher must have mentioned it. I can just imagine my son in his class now, paying no attention at all to what his teacher was saying. I picture him playing some game such as flicking his eraser around his desk instead of listening.
“What did you do at school today, son?”
“Hmmn? Do?”
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