Soapbox

August 4th, 1994

So I’ve got this kid…and he got separated from me one day at K-Mart. It was a very scary 7 or 8 minutes for both of us.
I told him that in the future, if he can’t find me in a store, he should go find someone that works at a cash register and tell them that he is lost. He countered that he couldn’t possibly do that because after all, he’s not allowed to talk to strangers. Oh yeah. Hmmm, how to explain this…
So I declared an ammendment to the family Constitution and said that while he should NEVER leave the store with anyone other than me, it’s OK to talk to a stranger if they work at the cash register and if you’re lost. Rather than wander around crying, he should just have me paged.

Lesson learned…too well. Now I can hardly go shopping without getting paged! One day at Frank’s Nursery it happened twice in the same half-hour! I no more than turn around and realize that he isn’t following me before I hear,
"We have a lost boy at the front of the store…" I don’t even wait to hear the name, ’cause I know who it is. I head up to the service counter and there he is, so proud of his resourcefulness that he’s grinning from ear to ear. I’m starting to think he enjoys having me paged!

I finally had to ask him to give himself at least a minute or two to look for me before he runs to the front desk because I’m starting to feel a bit stupid, losing my kid all the time. I have threatened him with a leash if it happens too frequently.
"But Mom, I’m supposed to do that when I get lost, remember?" he asked.
"Of course I remember, Stephen. I just want you to stop getting so cheerfully lost every time we go out! Spend a little more time paying attention while we’re shopping and a little less time with the store manager, would ya?"

Well, this is a boy who takes rules to heart, and sometimes beyond.
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So I’ve got this kid… and a short time ago his great-grandmother died. Pretty much the entire family tree, with all its many leaves and branches, gathered at my mother’s house for the funeral. Despite the fact that there were cousins to play with and not an excessive amount of weeping and wailing going on, Stephen still reacted quite predictably to the fact that something in his world had changed.
"I don’t want to be here." he said vehemently. " I want to go home to my house, and I don’t want to ever come back!" And finally, (for several reasons) I just put him in the car and took him home for one night.

Perhaps he was reassured by the fact that his house was still there, unchanged and waiting for him, but for whatever reason, he was quite willing to be driven back to my mother’s house the next day. He made it clear, though, that he would have nothing to do with any part of the funeral or visitation at the funeral home. His cousins could go and give her flowers if they wanted, he had no desire to see what dead looked like. With a hyper-sensitive child like him, it made good sense to me, so I agreed.
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