Just call me "Chicken Little"

            When it comes to hitting the panic button, I’m your ace, clean-up hitter. I go into Def-Con Mode 12 when I don’t know where my sons are or bad weather’s on the way.

My panic overdrive comes into play when my mom’s involved, and my poor brother Joey is the one I turn to in trying to turn the heat down on my nerves.

He was the one I called years ago when Mom answered the phone, dropped the receiver and never came back. He ran to her house, covered in wet paint, and found she’d forgotten about the phone when someone rang the doorbell.

Joey’s also the one I call when Mom doesn’t answer her phone if I call late in the evening or if there’s bad weather. He good-naturedly drives the few blocks over to her house and checks on her.

Even though I have a “Joey parachute,” we the panic driven are uncomfortable when we rocket into hyper-drive.

We tell ourselves to calm down and then the images go through our heads – a wreck on the side of the road and no one discovers our loved ones for hours.

Their getting robbed and left unconscious on the side of the road – the side of the road figures quite prominently in our anxiety attacks – and even worse.

With my mother, she’s also diabetic and I’ve been with her when her blood sugar dropped. To say that was terrifying is an understatement.

Hence the reason I gave her a carton – thank you Costco – of individual-sized packages of peanuts  to carry in her purse.

Plus my sensible sister and sisters-in-law make sure Mom has protein-rich snacks available at all times and regularly restock her fridge and pantry with healthy meals.

And – Mom I love you – but our mother isn’t the best driver. When we were toddlers, we’d cry if we had to get in the car with her because she kept turning into the ditch.

She grew up where there weren’t ditches and then came to Texas where the cars were as big as freight trains. At only five feet tall, she couldn’t really see over the steering wheel, and that’s why we landed in the ditch so often.

Thinking about ditches and picturing her stranded in one, I called Joey when Mom didn’t answer the phone after dinner Friday night and missed our regular Saturday morning phone call.

“Have you seen Mom,” I nonchalantly asked.

“No, didn’t she call you this morning?” he replied.

We realized she hadn’t talked to anybody in a while, so Joey said he’d go to her house and check. She’d been there, but nobody knew where she’d gone.

My smart sister discovered she’d played Candy Crush early in the morning and posted on my niece’s Facebook page, but no word from her for over eight hours and no answer on her cell phone.

By that time, almost all the Hebert siblings were on alert, and we made calls to where she volunteers and to a couple of friends.

When Mom came rolling into her driveway about 5 p.m., Joey and Debra were waiting on her, and I know she felt like a teenager who’d been busted for missing curfew.

So now Mom will make sure her phone’s not on vibrate – she’s disabling that function – and she promised to carry it with her everywhere she goes.

But on this one, I’ll take the blame for pushing the panic button early on. It’s what we panickers do, and until the sky really does fall, just call me Chicken Little.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.