July 29, 2012

The Time I Got Lost and Maybe Kidnapped

I was blog-hopping a little bit today and came across a story about someone finding a lost child in a bad part of town.  The story ended up with a happy ending, but it reminded me of a time I was the lost child.  As far as I can tell that ended happily as well.

The picture on the left here is of my little brother and I.  From what I can remember we were about a year or so, maybe two, older than we were in this photo, but this is one of my earliest memories and quite a bit fuzzy.

My mother doesn't seem to like to talk much about my early years so only so much has gotten filled-in over the years.

This is what I can recall from the time my brother and I were "kidnapped".
I cannot recall where we were, even though my memory places us at my Grandparents' house...which definitely wasn't the right house....not even the right state, but my mother was visiting friends and my brother and I wandered off to see what was going on down the street.  Evidently there was this underground church, or at least I recall it was a church of some kind.  People were lining up to enter this church, which was literally underground.  This is what drew my attention.

We wandered in too close and some people thought we had wandered off from the line and we were taken inside.  The next thing I can recall was that I was placed on a stage of some type with other children and handed a small basket that was filled with brand-new pennies and some combs.  An adult.....really I only remember the bottom of the legs, told me I can either take a comb or a handful of pennies.  The visual of these black plastic combs against a backdrop of bright and shiny pennies is vivid to this day.  I also remember a large faceless crowd sitting on benches in front of the stage.

The next thing I recall is all hell breaking loose as a bunch of uniformed policemen rushed into the room.  I remember there being a lot of commotion and at one point my little brother was wildly swinging a wiffle-ball bat at anything he could get a lick in to.  Of course at his age I doubt he'd even been able to put much of a dent in a softened stick of butter!

Evidently when my mother went looking for us a neighbor had seen some people take us underground into the church against our childish protests.  From what I gather this congregation wasn't well liked in the neighborhood and this was just the perfect excuse for the police to come down on these folks.

That is the extent of my memories on the subject.  I'm sure there was more to the topic, but my mother isn't forthcoming and as far as I know I'm not any worse off for the experience.  Of course maybe this is a deep-seated reason I'm not much of a fan of organized religion or churches in general.

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