Just So and Why

At the profane age of seven, or maybe eight, I got caught up in a whopper of a lie. The item had heart. It also had spirit. The thing came upon me suddenly, and it lived a magnificent if not short existence on this earth. In all honesty, my young soul grieved to have to let the contraption go so early. I may have even wept at its demise.

I had been standing next to my mother while she and my older sister shopped on the third floor of a fashionable department store in downtown Savannah. They, being preoccupied with new garments and admiring conversation, had forgotten about my insignificant presence. My loving father, who had wisely wandered away to another part of the store, had placed little me under their charge.

Some time after his departure, I heard an emergency siren outside. I perked right up at the sound. And I listened closely as the wailing grew louder and louder as whatever machine making that noise drew closer and closer.

As my ears and I listened to those magnificent tones, my imagination took off running down a Street of Speculate.

Where could that detail be headed, it asked?

My creative side made a sudden turn down an Avenue of What If, and it then posed a deeper question.

Whom could the thing be coming for?

Then I noticed an expansive Parkway of Possibility that lay before me and the entire world.

The clamor came to a sudden hush outside in front of our building. The excitement quieted and faded away, but the question remained stuck in my head.

And then a plausible answer stirred within me.

But then I noticed no one had been paying attention to the amazing siren. What a lovely sound to have heard. What a wonderful, lovely sound. And by the looks on their faces, everyone around me missed it entirely.

So I looked up at my mother’s sweet face and tugged once on her dress.

And when she looked down at her cherubic son, I calmly told her,

“They just picked up Dad.”

That promptly got both of those women’s attention.