What’s all the fuss about?

Eager to show-off her baby to former co-workers, my daughter-in-love left home early enough to eat breakfast, drink coffee and visit with regular customers instead of preparing them double lattes, espresso and black coffee with a shot of flavor.

The shop buzzed with gossip surrounding the previous day’s bombing a
69-year-old attorney had found a package left near his car’s assigned
spot in the parking garage. He picked it up and it exploded. The
explosion injured him, shook the adjoining 16-story office building
and forced hundreds of people to evacuate.

Busy with baby duty, our young mother had not heard or read anything about the event that brought agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI to the upscale St. Louis suburb.

She enjoyed breakfast and compliments of her blue-eyed girl with
red-blonde hair and one-toothed smile. Promising to hang around the
area long enough to visit after her friend got off work, she tossed
her wallet into the baby’s diaper bag, slung it over her shoulder and
loaded up with baby, car seat/infant carrier and her purse before
heading outside.

She walked around until the baby fell asleep then sat down on the
bench in front of the library across the street from the coffee shop
to make a phone call.

As the clock ticked down her time to meet her friend, she realized her
parking meter needed cash. To get change for the meter, she went
across the street and bought an iced tea.

As she crossed the street again, she noted all the police cars outside
blocking off the street near the library.
“What’s happening?” she asked a gawker.
“They found a mysterious bag outside the library.”

“That’s weird,” she said, hoisting her sleeping child along with the
rest of her load and headed into the library for some quiet reading
time.

Eventually the clock noted the end of her friends’ shift. Her friends
came out of the coffee shop smiling and shaking their heads at her,
“Did you lose your purse?”

Looking down, she checked off baby, diaper bag, carrier ? but no purse.
“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t remember having it in a while. Do you have
it?” she asked them.

“No, the Clayton police contacted us. They have it. They had to shut
down the street because of your purse.”

“Why?”
Because, she had left it on the bench in front of the library after
she made the phone call.

With the previous day’s bombing on everyone’s minds, the finder called
the police. The police blocked off the street and brought in the bomb
squad - who gingerly removed her innocent purse to a safe place.

Baby, momma and friends all trooped over to the police station to get
her purse.
One very unhappy police officer sighed as he pulled out her neglected handbag.
“You didn’t mean to leave this, did you,” he said scowled at her.
“No,” she quietly answered.

“I know,” he sighed, “But after yesterday’s bombing, we had to call
the police bomb squad to check it out.”

She apologized profusely, took her purse and slunk out, shaking her
head at all this trouble over a purse that normally she would not even
have gotten back.