Time on my Hands

When I was in kindergarten, the weather was getting so bad they sent us home from school early one day. Floods were breaking out all over, and tornadoes were a definite possibility. The gravel roads and wood plank bridges didn’t always last too long in a bad storm, so they wanted to get us home while they could.

When the bus got to the little road that led to another little road where we lived, the driver let us off. He didn’t want to take the bus across the bridge the led to those two roads. The water was already about to come across the top, and he would have had to drive us to the stop a few miles away and then turn around and come back, hoping the bridge was still there.

So he put us out where we were. Today people would raise a ruckus, I guess, but back then, we were expected to be more self-reliant, even as kids.

While I was walking across that bridge and looking at the water that was starting to lap up over the planks, I wondered if the creek had gotten shorter or the water had gotten taller. I almost stepped in to find out (something my mother doesn’t know to this day, so please don’t tell her). I used my better judgment at the age of five not to be swept away by a flooded creek.

We went trudging home, my big sister and me. It was a long way, and Mama didn’t even know they’d let school out early or dropped us off so far from home. Normally, it was about a half mile to the bus stop, but we were a couple of miles farther out. I was 5 and she was 6.

Child kidnapping had just become prominent, so we had both been thoroughly schooled in not getting into a car with anyone we weren’t related to. When the preacher’s wife pulled up and offered us a ride, we both politely declined. We told her we’d get in trouble. After much coaxing, she us inside her big, shiny car and home in style.

Mama wasn’t mad like I thought she might be. And she refined her message to say that it was okay to get into people’s car if they were the preacher’s wife’s or someone like her.

I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about that today, except that I’ve been home sick and bored. I have too much time to think about near-misses and what-ifs. What if I had stepped off that bridge to measure the water? What if it hadn’t been the preacher’s wife, but someone with sinister motives and just as smooth a tongue?

Being sick is not good for me. And not just because it makes me grumpy and impossible. I get bored about five minutes in, and then just sit there stewing, trying to think of something I can do that won’t tax my impaired resources too much.

This is what I did today.