It’s 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. I’m typing away at my computer, nose to the grindstone, when I hear an all-too familiar ring.

Fishing my cell phone from my purse, I check the caller ID. It’s my 22-year-old daughter calling from her summer job at a camp in the Catskills. Again.

“Hi, honey!” I say cheerily, trying to hide my anticipatory anxiety (the job was not going well, to say the least.) “What’s up?”

“I’ve been lost all day!!” she cries into the phone.

My pulse quickens, and I feel my blood pressure spike 10 points.

“What do you mean you’re lost? Where are you?” I ask, too preoccupied to recognize the idiocy of my questions.

“I was trying to find the Galleria in Middletown. It’s my day off, and I borrowed a van to go to the mall. I missed my turn; now I’m all turned around!”

“Did you ask for help?” I inquire, a forced calm in my voice. (Kids are like dogs; they can sense fear.)

“Three times! But the roads are so winding, and they keep saying ‘go North, then West.’ I’m no good with directions!”

“OK, OK. Don’t worry,” I assure her, racked with guilt, knowing she gets her navigational aptitude from me. “I’ll get you out of this.”

I spring into helicopter mode. (He-li-cop-ter par-ent (noun): a pejorative term used to describe parents who hover closely overhead, never out of reach of their children.) I hop on MapQuest.com, find Middletown and quickly determine she is somewhere in the Hudson Valley of New York. “Somewhere” being the operative word.

“You need to find 17 West. That’s the highway that goes back toward the mall,” I instruct her.

“I don’t want to go the mall anymore. I just want to get back,” she replies, wearily.

“She’s lost the will to shop,” I think to myself. “This is worse than I thought.”

We spend the next hour trading phone calls (she on speaker phone, me on my cell and lap top). Finally, she finds 17 and heads west. We hang up. Thirty minutes later, the phone rings. My palms start to sweat.

“I see the turn I missed! I’m going in the right direction,” she says, happily.

Wow, I think to myself, she really WAS lost. (I later learn she turned around only when she saw the “Welcome to Pennsylvania” sign.)

“Now, all you have to do is stay on 17 for 25 miles, get off on 42 North,” I tell her. Our signal starts to cut out. “Then you’ll be 15 minutes from camp. Call me when you make the turn!”

“42 North. Thanks, Mom :” I hear her say, faintly, before we’re disconnected.

I phone her precisely 30 minutes later. It rings once, then goes into voice mail. I try again. Same result. (Blasted hills and valleys!!) I try and try and try, my attempts three minutes apart, like labor pains. Still, no answer. Her battery must be dead. This can’t be good.

An hour passes. I go home. I should have heard from her by now.

Another half hour passes. I’m pacing the floor.

Thirty more minutes go by. I call the camp and explain the situation. There’s not a lot they can do, they say. I Google the number for the Sullivan County Sherriff’s office. Just in case. My mind races with horrifying thoughts: “Directionally challenged Kansas girl abducted by Catskill slave traffickers” : Do they put 22-year-olds on milk cartons? … E.T. phone home!!!

Another agonizing hour goes by. I call the camp again. “She must be having car trouble,” I say. “Could you please find out the type of vehicle she’s in and the license number and call me back?”

I wait. My heart races. Nausea sets in. It must be getting dark there. The worry! The anguish! When does it end?

The phone rings. “Hi, Mom. I’m back,” a voice says, sheepishly.

I choke up with relief. “What happened? Did you get lost again!?” I ask, teetering on the edge.

“No, I stopped at Wal-Mart to get a few things. Then I went to a diner, had a burger and a whiskey Coke, and came back. I feel much better now.”

“Why didn’t you CALL?!! I was worried SICK!” I cried.

“I was waiting for my cell phone to charge.”

(The moral of the story: Before they leave home, make sure your children are intimately familiar with the concept of pay phones.)