lost.

I have been lost twice. Once, my parents had just bought this massive tract of land behind our house, and we were all going out to check out the new property. I was probably ten years old and well used to wandering around the acreage we already had. My parents were walking together, pointing out features of their newly acquired land, while I tagged along several steps behind and got easily distracted by paths and trees and leaves. So I strayed from whatever path there was, and I was soon in a strange place (though it was now owned by my family) without my parents.

I was distraught.

It didn't make much sense to be distraught, because wherever my parents were, they would have been sure to hear me yelling. But I didn't think of yelling because I was too busy thinking of panicking. I was lost, I was abandoned! I scrambled around in my ever-increasing distress, trying to find either a familiar path or a familiar face. Finally, I saw them standing in a big clearing on the top of a hill.

They had not noticed that I had been lost.

True, I'd probably been separated from them for less than five minutes and we did have a "within yelling distance" childcare policy at my house. For whatever reason, I freaked out about being separated from them and then I was hurt and irritated that they hadn't even bothered to notice how close they came to losing me forever. I don't think I ever told them.

The second time, because I said there were two times and it would be mean for me to only talk about one, was a couple of years later. I was taking a nap in my parents' bedroom. It's difficult to get lost while asleep in your parents' bedroom, but I managed it. I wasn't asleep, only lying down for a while in the quiet cool that my parents' room always maintained in spite of the hectic heat of the rest of the house. I heard my mother call for me. I didn't know what she wanted, but I didn't feel like answering, so I decided to pretend to be asleep. I heard her call me again, walking down the hall to my own bedroom. Then she went outside, and I heard her testing her "within yelling distance" policy. I could hear the increasing desperation in her voice as she called my name over and over. I knew that she thought I was lost or hurt or dead somewhere, but I stayed put. Finally, she came back in the house and checked her own bedroom and found me. Remember, I was still pretending to be asleep, so she only sighed with relief at finding her little angel safe within dreamland and then quietly left the room.

I never told her about that, either.

I'm not sure if the two incidents are related, whether I let my mother think I was missing to make up for the time she hadn't noticed that I actually was. In any case, it was probably a rotten thing to do to my poor little mother. But now she knows about both, and she's going to feel bad about the first one. Then she'll get to the second story and figure that we're probably even.