Taking In Strays

I have a history of taking in strays — not the kind of strays you might think.

I take in stray kids.

It started years ago, when Audrey spent as much time in our home as she did in her home with her single, active duty service member mom. It just made sense. She was Jenn’s friend. She was in our Girl Scout troop. Her mom worked weird hours or was gone a lot. So, she just stayed with us. She probably would have stayed even more if she’d attended the same school Jenn did — but she didn’t, she lived at the other end of the base so she did sometimes go home and was often alone when she was there.

Chris and Michelle grew up with Audrey always at our house. They learned early that stray kids who need a place to stay or just want to stay with us are welcome. So stray girlfriends, boyfriends or just friends would should up and suddenly we realized they’d been here for weeks on end. Some of those kids lived with us for years without ever actually discussing it with us. It was fine.

Stray kids were welcome.

Now that none of those big kids live here with us, I thought those days might be over. The little kids have never been inclined to bring home stray kids that way. It might happen some day, because they did grow up with extra kids in the house and while they generally ignored Chris’s girlfriends who stayed off and on, they loved Chuck — the house fairy. So ya never know, they may bring home a stray of their own someday. Time will tell.

I did find it very amusing when Michelle buzzed me a couple of days ago to tell me that her friend Susan was not going to be visiting her in Philadelphia as originally planned — instead, she was moving to Chicago and… she needed a place to stay. Could she…?

I laughed and told her she could. Michelle said “Cool, she and her boyfriend will be there tomorrow.” lol

They didn’t turn up yesterday… they showed up today, instead.