LOST THEN FOUND IN THE UPS AND DOWNS

LOST THEN FOUND IN THE UPS AND DOWNS(L DOUGLAS ST OURS) LOST THEN FOUND IN THE UPS AND DOWNS


Even though my cause was hopeless
I stubbornly clung to my mother's apron
as she wrestled me onto the school bus that first day of kindergarten.


You'd bawl and howl too if you were betrayed as I was,
by the person I loved the most. It just wasn't fair
that my younger brothers got to stay home.
At that tender age I was emotionally unprepared
to lose my mommy sheltered world.


I still believed with all my heart
in the Sand Man, Santa Claus,
the little engine that could,
the Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost,
the Easter Bunny, my guardian angel,
that storks delivered babies, Leprechauns
and gold at the rainbows end,
a white god with a long beard,
a red devil with a forked tail,
and those insatiable monsters
that lurked every night under my bed.


Once on the bus
embarrassed by the gathering and curious stares of my prospective peers,
I cut the crying and wiped the tears, though I was still sniffling
when the lay teacher marched us single file into the wood frame school.


To my surprise the class was bright and cheery
with props and toys that reminded me of Miss Nancy's Romper Room.
Still longing for the jingling bells of the popsicle man,
my panic eased as I accepted my fate.


During class we fingerpainted and molded ashtrays out of clay
and then we formed a circle for story time
after which we traced and cut out pictures
we had crayoned in with our favorite colors.
In the middle of all that bliss we took naps
on bath towels we pretended were magic carpets
laid out on the linoleum floor.


After a couple of weeks at these half days of happiness
I hit it off so comfortably with one classmate
that when he invited me to get off at his bus stop
I said "sure. Why not?"


I was too immature to realize or conceive
what might happen when my eight month pregnant mother
without a car waiting at the usual spot to greet me in front of our house,
discovered when the bus door opened I was no where to be found.


That afternoon a couple blocks from my house
I was as chipper as a lark after disembarking from the bus with my new found friend.
We played tag and redlight on his front lawn for about an hour
before an ominous black patrol car pulled to the curb and two policemen emerged.
I must have aroused the one officer's suspicions because he kept staring at me
which had the effect of paralyzing me like a deer caught in headlights.


Suddenly up close and way too personal that cop asked me if I was me.
This practically blew me away! How in the name of god could he know my name?
This unexpected development chilled me to the bone
as I felt myself shrink and shrivel into the folds of my peach pit skin.
I was too small and too yellow and they were too close
for me to run or resist and besides they both carried guns.


One of them placed a meaty hand on my shoulder
trembling like all the rest of me in fear,
he then escorted me to the rear of the car
after I slid alone and terror stricken into the back seat, he closed the door.
Afraid that if I made too much noise they'd clobber me with their nightsticks,
I dipped low and out of their sight and then wept silently.


It was then that I recalled my father's stern warnings
that if I was really bad, I'd be thrown into a jail
to subsist on stale bread and a bucket of water.
Then, even worse, I remembered the nightmares
I endured in my own bed in the company of my brothers
and how unbearably horrible they would become
all alone in a jail cell on a cot.
My simple mind was racing so fast
that if I had been fifty years older
I would've suffered a stroke.


But before that awful reality sunk in, the car stopped,
one of the officers opened the door
and to my immense relief at my own house
where I saw anxious moms milling outside.
I wasted no time dashing past them all
to my front porch and into the arms of my mom
who hugged me real tight! I survived the ordeal.
It was only later that I learned
it was she!
My own mom
who had called the cops!


by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
April 2010