Child - Lost and Found

It started at McDonald’s. In a line sandwiched between a fat lady dressed in black and the skinny roofer with tar covered hands. The boy and his dad stood next to each other waiting for their order. Dad looked stressed. It’s McDonalds for God sakes, I thought. How stressful can this be? He kept looking at his watch and shifting his weight from foot to foot. It was the boy, however, who really caught my attention. Red hair, rail skinny, worn jeans, unrecognizable something on the back of his t-shirt. But it wasn’t the outside that I noticed, it was the inside. I sidestepped the Michelin lady. Two steps in fact. Then I inched closer to the counter pretending to squint at the menu board. The boy was emitting something. Something I could vaguely recall from my youth. Something I had lost completely. The boy felt different. I stepped back in line and had to squeeze between skinny guy and Michelin tire woman. She expelled air loudly in disgust. The sound reminded me of a tire deflating.

Maybe it was just the redheaded boy. Maybe he was special. I spent the next week hovering. It sounds weird, I know, but I couldn’t get the feeling out of my head. Being next to the McDonald’s boy made me for a brief moment feel happy and light. I went to parks where families picnicked, attended two soccer games, walked by a school in the afternoon as the buses congregated. Nothing. Just noise, exhaust fumes and barking dogs. Just stress, and yelling and fear and disappointment.

My least favorite place to shop is Sam’s Club. I resent having to get permission to walk into a store just to buy a two year supply of toilet paper. But it is cheap. I have to give them that. I rolled my cart through the store, stocking up on Advil (four year’s supply), dishwasher soap (40 lbs.) and toilet paper. I got stuck in the bottled water section. Too many choices make me freeze up. And then it happened again. Across the aisle in the soft drink section. I could feel it. Happiness. Calmness. Contentedness. “Pick.” She said. “We have to get home before your dad.” I spun around and the packaging of my 48 pack of bottled water disintegrate. A half a dozen bottles to my right, another half dozen to my left and one straight ahead. It stopped directly under their cart. The boy laughed. To be honest it was funny. I laughed too. Mom didn’t. No time to laugh. Work to be done. Errands to do. Family to manage. Life to attend to. I set the remaining bottles down and walked to the bottle under the cart. The boy did the same thing. We both reached for the bottle under the cart at the same time. Our hands touched and we bumped our heads. He was 6 or so. He giggled. The sound made me smile. It also made me stop. Butt up in the air, hands and knees on a dirty concrete floor, hand touching a 14.8 cent bottle of water. I felt something long lost. Mom quickly nudged the cart. She looked nervous. She was getting her protective look. I picked up the bottle, stood up and smiled at her. “Sorry about that,” I said and put my hand on the boy’s head as he stood up. I let it linger. That was a mistake. She yanked on his arm and pulled him from my hand. “Why don’t you watch what you’re doing?” she said, mad and fearful at same time. “Come on, Brandon”.


I got home and put away my stuff. Then I sat down and looked at my hand. The hand that touched his head. It was unmistakable, the feeling. I closed my eyes. I tried to force that feeling to come back. But it was gone. Completely. Like a dream you have that is completely gone when you awake. You know you had the dream, you can feel the edges of it, but you can’t return to it. It’s like a bubble that you can’t pierce. Every time you touch the bubble it moves away from you. It’s there and you want to be inside it, but you can’t. I put my hand down and placed it on my thigh. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t.

I’m a little neurotic. Mostly about germs. I won’t use the hot air hand dryers in public bathrooms. The idea that someone would invent something that would actually blow germs around a room seems crazy to me. So when I saw the boy drop his lollipop in the rest area bathroom, I froze. He picked it up and licked. All in one motion. I didn’t even have time to gasp. But I did stare. And his father, who had just come out of the stall, was watching. I shuttered and he glared. And the boy licked. He was happy.

The sadness was becoming pervasive. Was there something broken inside me? I sat in my chair again when I got home and this time I did cry. A real cry. Not the kind of cry from a sad event, a lost love one, a good movie. A cry that came from the depths of me.

They were brother and sister. Sitting at the next table at Pizza Hut. My eyes were still red from crying but I couldn’t take another moment of my sadness. I needed a distraction. And I was hungry. I sat at a table right next the family. The girl was about 6 and the boy maybe a couple of years older. As I looked at them I heard a splat. The whole topping of my pizza, pepperoni, sausage, olives, cheese and tomato sauce slid off the crust. The boy and girl looked at me. The girl laughed. Our eyes found each other. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. She is still looking at me, I thought. I smiled wider and so did she. She pointed at my chest. There were big tomato sauce splotches everywhere. Then I looked at the boy. He caught my gaze just for a second and then looked away. His smiled disappeared with his shifting gaze. I looked back at the girl. She was now feeding her doll a slice of pizza. She looked so content.

The next week I looked at people. Not through people, at them. Into their eyes. In the elevator I stepped in and looked at a pretty business attired woman. She looked at me then stared at the elevator buttons. I tried some small talk but she never turned. I keep looking at her ear. When the elevator stopped she moved to the door even before it opened.

I went back to the park, this time with my lawn chair. I set up base near the playground. A woman gave me a quizzical look, I just smiled at look at her until she looked away. I guess it would have been better if I had a dog. Men with dogs are trustworthy. Men with lawn chairs are not. I sat under the shade of an oak tree, settled in and closed my eyes. I let my mind slow. I forgot about my job, my ex, the rent, my aches and pains. I listened to clank of the playground equipment, the leaves rustling through the oak tree, and the cars passing nearby. And then, I listened to the children. Not to their words but to their essence. I soaked in their happiness, their care freeness, their freedom from fear. The sounds overcame me. They entered my ears and flowed through my body. Weariness started to wash away from me. “Excuse me.” I flinched but refused to surface. “Sir.” I squinted my eyes open. Black uniform, shiny badge. “Sir, why are you sitting here?” the officer asked. Anger flared up inside me. It caught me by surprise. “It’s a park.” I said. I wanted to say much more. “Yes, sir, it is a park, and a large one, with lots of great shade trees. Why don’t you find a tree over there, next to tennis courts?” he said. I squinted again and shifted my eyes to the right of his holster. A group of three women all turned their heads away from me at the same time. “Oh.” I said. “I’m sorry.”

I collapsed my lawn chair and went home. Sat in my chair. But this time I didn’t cry. Some of the joy still clung to me. I smiled and drifted off to sleep.

Slowly I began to feel happiness. Unplanned, spontaneous happiness. I watched a bird in a bird bath. He was flapping his wings crazily. He was so comical, flapping and splashing. I don’t ever remember seeing that before. I chortled. I saw the fat lady again. She was pulling her stretch pants up and pulling her stretch top down. The kid next me screwed up his face in laughter. So did I. I walked to my car balancing on a curb, my hands and arms waving wildly in the air. A lady passed by me in the drive through lane and scowled at me and shook her head. I stuck out my tongue.

I went home but I didn’t sit. I opened the window and leaned way out. I balanced my stomach on the ledge and lifted my feet off the floor just a little. I let out a hoot. I don’t think anyone heard me but for the first time in a long time I didn’t care.

Then it happened. One day I woke up happy. I heard the alarm but I listened to the birds. I made by coffee but savored the smell. I put on my striped tie, and then changed it to the one with the monkey and banana on it. I gave the pretty business woman some homemade chocolate chip cookies in the elevator. She stared at the buttons and I grinned at her ear. I didn’t care that she exited one floor earlier than usual. I didn’t care that my tie was a cartoon. I smiled and suddenly knew. I had found the forgotten child in me.