Trying not to hit the button

Andrew gets off the bus a few minutes before 3:00 and walks home. He usually stands outside for a few minutes and talks to one of his friends and then comes inside. Today I was waiting for him so we could head off to the children's museum and it was taking a long time. I looked out the window and couldn't see him and so I decided to walk towards the bus stop in case he was there talking. When I got there, he wasn't there. I started to have that feeling - the rapid heartbeat feeling where you can feel the panic coming, but can still keep it at bay. I wanted to be rational and so the first thing I did was call the school to see if the bus was running late (we were having some flurries) or if Andrew missed the bus. They had me on hold while they contacted the bus driver and so I started to check his friend's houses. One of the moms had seen Andrew get off the bus and start to walk home so I knew he had at least made it that far. I was really struggling to keep the panic from setting in and decided to check back at the house just in case we had somehow crossed paths. He wasn't there and I only knew of one other place to check. While I was walking there, I called Greg and told him what was going on (it had been about 25 minutes at this point)and I had to hold back the tears. While I was still on the phone with Greg I went to the friend's house and found that Andrew was there. My panic immediately turned into wild emotions - I was so relieved, so angry that he hadn't asked before going to his friend's house, so grateful that he was okay...adrenaline induced emotion. When Andrew came to the door I brought him outside and told him that he could never, ever do that again. I was explaining how worried I was and then Andrew said, "but you weren't home". I asked him what he was talking about and he said that he noticed the car was gone and so he went to his friend's house to wait. He hadn't thought about the possibility that the car was in the garage - which it was (he didn't think of it because we just got the garage fixed a week ago and just started parking in it this weekend). It ended up that it was just a little miscommunication, but during those long 25 minutes, it took everything in me not to hit the panic button with full force!