I don’t know if you’ve ever been left at a Walmart Supercenter during a rainstorm, but it’s not the best.

I was around 11 years old, and my sister and I had begged my mom to take us to Walmart so we could buy a few things. My sister wanted a vanity mirror, a very teenager-y thing to purchase, and I, of course, was on the hunt for the newly released High School Musical 2 DVD. This was obviously an important purchase that needed to be made.

We had just come back from the hospital, where my dad had told my mother, “Lori, I trust you with the kids.” He was in there for the second or third time because he was getting tests done about the stage IV colon cancer that he was diagnosed with just a month prior. The moment between the two was very heartfelt, but fast forward a few hours later, and I was forgotten in the Walmart parking lot.

After my mom agreed to take us to Walmart at an ungodly late hour (shoutout to her for actually agreeing to be our chauffeur), we made our purchases and headed to the car. I remember it was a very windy, rainy night. I was in charge of pushing the cart, so it was my duty to put it back in the corral. After we unloaded our purchases, I yelled through the open backseat door and over the terrible weather, “I’m going to take the cart back!” So, I shut the door and calmly walked the cart back to the cart corral. When I turned back around, I chuckled at the sight before me: my mom driving away from the parking spot. Oh, they’re just being silly, I thought to myself. She and my sister, Taylor, were probably chatting amongst themselves in the front seat, so I stood there while I waited for them to drive back around and stop this weird little joke. After a pause at the stop sign, they kept driving. That’s when it sunk in that they weren’t kidding, and they actually forgot about me in the parking lot. I didn’t have a cellphone at the time, so I booked it from the parking lot to the inside of the store in my off-brand Uggs. I found a worker and half-panted/half-asked, “Can I use a phone?” I called my mom, and when I told her that I was at Walmart, she assumed that my oldest sister was calling her, the one who was living in Tulsa at the time to go to school. A Walmart is within walking distance of the university, so it all checked out. After a beat with no response, I gave my name to clarify which daughter she was speaking to. I assume she and my other sister turned their heads around to look at the empty back seat, because they both burst out laughing after they realized what had happened. As a still-homeschooled 11-year-old girl, I did not find this funny, and once they said that they were coming back to get me, I ended the call and thanked the worker for allowing me to borrow their store phone.

Now, this Walmart story is a running joke with my family. As the youngest kid and the only one forgotten at a superstore in her adolescence, I jokingly say, “I’m always the last to know things in my family.” Occasionally, I throw in the “one time, my family forgot me at a Walmart”—you know, the classic “youngest kid” tropes.

To this day, I am unsure if my mom ever told my dad what happened that night.

Reagan Fleming