All in my Mind

XXXI.

When Alexander was 5, he almost got kidnapped at a truck stop in northern Texas. His parents had brought him on a road trip(Emily wasn't born yet, so it was just the three of them). He'd never been so far away from home before, and he liked that all the plants and skies and critters looked different than they looked back home next to the ocean. He kept wandering off to look at everything. Keeping track of him was quite the headache for his parents on that trip.

He was a cute five year old by the way. He had those curls of mine, and those bright blue eyes. He had chubby cheeks and a nice smile, even though two of his teeth were missing near the front. I'm certain he was wearing a shirt with Bill Nye the Science Guy on it. When they got back from this trip, he was going to go to a summer science day camp to learn about the different types of rocks. Life was good for five year old Alexander.

Anyways, his dad was moving things around in the trunk of the car looking for the cooler so that his mom could make them sandwiches. His mom was in the truck stop bathroom. They told Alexander to stay with dad, but something we both share is that I'm not excellent at taking directions.

Alexander wandered off and found a lizard. I think it was a little brown skink.  He went out of his way and found it in a text book years later. It was walking around the grass just a few feet away from the car. Little Alexander saw it by chance honestly. Pure luck.

He approached it loudly the way small children do, and it scuttled away in the opposite direction immediately. In all his budding brilliance, Alexander decided to follow it.

It crossed the grass while he hustled to keep up in its wake. He liked how it's whole body wiggled when it walked. He found that part fascinating. He wondered about the mechanics of it; why it wiggled. He liked that the grass was taller than it, because it bristled while the lizard ran. Together they turned and crossed the grass. They ended up on the opposite side of the truck stop. That's where the lizard made its escape and poor Alexander lost him.

One second he was excitedly following, and the next he was panting in the hot Texas sun alone while staring at the spot where he'd last seen it.

He was alone.

He looked around and realized he didn't recognize anything or anyone. Of course, I know he could have turned around and gone back the way he'd come, but when you're five, you sometimes don't think logically like that. He was alone. He was lost. He started crying because he'd lost his lizard friend and his parents all in the short span of about 97 seconds.

Then a man walked up to him. He thought he must have been a truck driver for one of the many huge container trucks parked across the lot. I know that he was way taller than little Alexander, but that wasn't hard. He was just a kid. To him though, the man was a tower. He had scruffy hair, and an even scruffier beard, and he smelled like cigarettes and fast food joints even from a few feet away.

"Hey little man," he said, and he kneeled down infront of him. "Why are you crying?"

Little Alexander rubbed his eyes furiously and sniffled. He said something incoherent about not being able to find his mommy even though he hadn't actually looked.

"That's all right," he'd said, and he'd pet Alexanders hair. The little boy found that comforting at the time, but now I look back and I have major inquiries about a grown man petting the hair of a strangers small child. I actually have a lot of inquiries about that man to be honest. "It's okay, you'll probably find your mommy soon."

And honestly, that statement helped him stop crying. Kids are simple, aren't they?

"I like your shirt," he added, which also helped a lot, because he also really liked his shirt. I still like the shirt too.