my child's future lost to a cell phone on buzz

A Montessori charter school for grades K-3 is opening up in Manchester this fall. Last spring, we entered our daughter in the lottery for a spot. She didn't get in. We didn't get a post card or any notification that she was on the waiting list. Months went by. We got over it.

Last Tuesday we went on vacation, a long car trip to New York, then D.C., then back to New York, then back home. In D.C. I had tried calling my husband's cell phone and he didn't answer it. I thought it was just museum noise.

He was driving us from D.C. to N.Y. around 9:30 at night when I noticed the cell phone in his pocket. "That can't be comfortable," I said, so I helpfully pulled it out. Then I noticed, "There are messages."

"Probably just you calling me yesterday," said Ro.

"I didn't leave a message."

I called and got one message from his mother, plus another from someone at the Montessori Charter school: "We need to hear from you by 5pm today if you want Rafaela enrolled."

"Oh my gosh!"

My family all worried that someone had died, I sounded so excited.

I emailed from New York, around midnight, and called them the next morning, around 8:30 am.  It was too late. They had given away her slot.

Now, I had been checking my email accounts daily. We did find the cell phone message within the same day that it was left. We just have never gotten around to figuring out how to retrieve messages from our home answering machine. We have never received any messages before that couldn't wait for us to return from vacation. Apparently, the school left us one message on Thursday, another one earlier in the week, and then thought to try the cell phone number on the day of our last chance. Had Ro's cell phone been set to ring instead of buzz, there's a good chance he'd have answered it.

Ro tells me he had explained that the cell phone, which was my cell phone before I got a new one for work, was stuck on buzz and he didn't know how to change it to ring. I don't remember him telling me that. It was one of those couple miscommunications--was he talking while I was looking like I was paying attention? or while I didn't look like I was paying attention? I could have fixed it when he said he told me, and then we'd have a daughter in Montessori school.

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the 142nd birthday of Maria Montessori. Yeah, rub it in, Google.