Once, Mrs. Pickwick spent a blissful evening at choir rehearsal, completely uninterrupted by any little Pickwickian emergencies. Even Baby P’s bedtime came and went, and with no panic-stricken texts, or Baby himself delivered mid-rehearsal. How can this be? Mrs. Pickwick marveled at this delightful freedom, truly incredulous that her phone had remained silent from 7–9 pm. Her incredulity quickly transformed to dismay when she walked out of the choir room, began to compose a cheerful “on my way home” sort of text, and saw that Baby P had urgently been requesting her presence since 8:05 pm. Somehow, the texts were already read! Certainly not read by Mrs P, who had been carefully watching, especially around the finicky hour she suspected would be rather tearful without her. She dashed home at a run and burst through the door, to the harrowing scene of— Fr Pickwick on the couch watching Fiddler on the Roof, with several happy-to-be-awake-at-this-hour little Pickwicks, one Busy Pickwick fast asleep on a cushion, and Baby Pickwick sleeping peacefully in his crib. All accounted for, and none distressed in the least, save Mrs P.

“I’m so sorry! Somehow your texts did not come through! I can’t understand why!”

Fr P: “Well, just when I was ready to give in and bring him to you- I was just, um, finishing a song, he went to sleep. But that is strange about the texts.”

Mrs P: “Really, I never saw them, despite checking my phone religiously all evening.”

Fr P, with eyebrows slightly raised: “Religiously? You checked it religiously?”

Mrs P: “Yes, of course.”

Fr P: “Ah, I see. So you looked at it about twenty minutes late, read it halfway through and then had to take someone to the bathroom, came back to it in time to glance at part of it before someone else had a meltdown and then you just barely caught the end before everyone left in tears and then you forgot what it said?”

Mrs. P: “Precisely.”