This Will Only Hurt a Little(3)

So, the story!

Apparently, when I was two or three, there were a bunch of neighborhood kids playing on our block, and at some point, my mom noticed I was missing.

“Wait, Mom,” I always say at this point. “How did you notice I was missing?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Just, at some point, you weren’t there.”

“So how long was I gone for?”

“I’m not sure, Busy. But that’s what you were like. This was before we installed the high locks on our doors. It was a different time. If you were in the house playing somewhere, I wasn’t always watching you. I was doing dishes or laundry. And if you decided you wanted to do something, you would do it. There was no stopping you.”

“Even at two?”

“Even at two! Even at one! Still! It’s who you are!”

“Okay. So then what?”

“Well, I gathered all the neighborhood kids and said, ‘Busy is missing,’ and they all got on their bikes and Big Wheels and went up and down the street calling your name, and I was apoplectic! I called the police! There was no sign of you.”

“That’s crazy.”

“It was crazy! But that’s just what you were like. It’s like the time I took you shopping to Carson’s, and you know I didn’t like that mall where Carson’s was—”

(I don’t even know what Carson’s is, by the way. I’m assuming it’s some sort of department store from the early ’80s.)

“—and one second you were with me and then you were just gone and I couldn’t find you and we called mall security. My heart was racing and then this very nice saleswoman said sweetly, ‘I think I’ve found her.’ And there you were! In the middle of a rack of clothes, sitting alone, happy as can be, looking up at all the clothes around you! But I just about had a heart attack!”

“Oh. I actually think I remember looking up at the clothes. But I must have been really little.”

“You were!!”

“Wait. So my walk around the block?”

“Yes! I was also terrified because there was a construction site on the street behind us and I was afraid you had fallen in—”

(This is also fucking crazy to me. I mean, can you imagine? Like, there’s some construction site on the street behind ours and there I was, just inches away from falling into a ditch and becoming the next Baby Jessica!)

“—but just as the police van pulls up we could see you coming around the corner in your diaper. And there was a woman on a bike behind you.”

“Who was this woman?!?”

“Oh. A nice lady. Well, I guess she lived on the corner of the street you had turned down and she was on her porch having her tea and saw this little thing toddling by and thought, ‘This doesn’t look right.’ So she got her bike out and just slowly followed behind you to see where you were going and make sure you didn’t hurt yourself.”

“That’s weird. If I saw a toddler walking down the street alone in a diaper I’d probably do more than just quietly follow behind on my bike, you know?”

“She was just trying to make sure you were okay, Busy. But that’s how you’ve always been. You and Jessie from across the street used to plan out how to run away to the park on your Etch A Sketch. And you always had some sort of black eye or bruise. There was just no stopping you!”

“It’s a theme.”

“Well, it is a theme, Elizabeth.”

(Sometimes, my mom calls me Elizabeth, which is my given name. But she only uses it in order to emphasize a point. Or when I’m annoying her. Or both.)

“You just aced out in your nudes and there was no stopping you!”

I need you to take a moment to truly appreciate how insane a phrase like “aced out in your nudes” is. It never occurred to me that other people’s parents didn’t talk the way mine did. My parents one hundred percent made up weird phrases like “aced out in her nudes” and sold them to me and my older sister like they were things normal people said and generally understood. There are other misunderstandings from my childhood that I’m not sure were actually my parents’ fault. Like, until about seven years ago, I was convinced fl. oz. (as in fluid ounces) stood for “floor ounces”—which I weirdly thought was a unit of measurement?? I still don’t have any idea where I got that.

Anyway, I was recently telling my friend Piera the walk-around-the-block story and we decided maybe that should be the thing I get tattooed on myself, if I ever get a tattoo. “Aced out in her nudes” is totally my “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

So that’s the story, more or less. The police left. The lady on the bike rode home. My parents installed high locks on the door. And I continued getting lost or injuring myself until I figured out not to do it. But to my parents, and probably my older sister, Leigh Ann, that’s just who I was. And the story became a humorous anecdote to illustrate my personality.

Unstoppable. Headstrong. Defiant.

And I probably am all of those things. But when I look at who I was then and who I’ve become, I think it might be a little deeper.

Look, I’m a mom now and I get it. It’s fucking hard to parent two little girls. We have a full-time nanny and it’s still not easy for me. When I was a kid, my dad worked and my mom didn’t have any help. I know it was a different time; especially in a neighborhood like that, where everyone kind of looked out for each other. But when I think about two-year-old me, walking around the block in a diaper, a toddler who had been left alone long enough to “ace out in my nudes” and make it all the way around the corner before anyone noticed I was missing . . . well, it just makes me a little sad, I guess?