Retroactive Child Protective Services

You might believe you had a happy childhood.  You might have fond memories of learning to ride your bike while your dad was away at fish camp, so you could surprise him at his homecoming.  You might remember falling and getting up and pedaling and falling and getting up and falling again, and when your mother asked if you'd like to stop for the day you picked up your bruised body and looked at her through twig entangled hair and yelled, your red mouth sputtering with sobs and dirt, "No!  I'm [sob] having [gasp] FUN!!"


You might remember those endless, cricket-orchestrated summer evenings, when you and your best friend concocted wild, elaborate schemes to spy on the neighborhood weirdo, and such schemes always involved fleeing across adjoining yards and hiding behind bushes, your hearts pounding, and somehow, back then, hiding behind a bush was the greatest thing you'd ever done in your life.


You'd brew rare and exotic perfumes out of magnolia blossoms, walk your cat to school, gingerly touch the spines of your dad's Hyalophora cecropia caterpillars as they wobbled their fat green bodies across cherry prunings and wonder how on earth these hungry little accordions could transform themselves into cinnamon-sprinkled moths with 4-inch wingspans.


The thing is, while you were spying on weirdos and sniffing bugs, your parents were busy arguing about chore delegation and capital gains.  You were out there having an absolute hoot, and your parents were completely miserable.  Miserable with their jobs, with each other, with the amount of work it took to keep you alive and kicking.  You didn't see how flawed these two people were, how unprepared they had been to bring new life onto this lonely blue marble (but is anyone really prepared for it?)  You didn't start to see this, well really until after college, when you came back, a bonified person, with new eyes and a new understanding of where you came from.


This is how I returned to my aprents at the wizened age of 23.  One night, as I sat down at the table, Daddy walked into the dining room and yelled, "Where is it??"
"Where's what?" I asked.
"The part that goes with the walkie talkies!"
"What part that goes with the walkie talkies?"
"It's a black piece of plastic, it came off one of the casings, it's about one centimeter by a half-centimeter.  I put it right here on the table!" my indcredulous father cried.


I looked down at the dining room table.  I give you this list, dear reader, in the naive hope that you will believe me when I tell you that not one item has been falsely augmented.  The 3ft squared table supported:
Three placemats.
Two DVDs.
One bulb of garlic.
Two candles.
One bag of Halls Mentholyptus Cough Drops.
Fifty pages of Franklin Covey planner inserts.
One bottle of water.
One copy of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything."
One eyeclass case.
Three salt and pepper shakers, two of them shaped like Santa and Mrs. Clause.
Three coasters.
Forty-two pieces of mail.
Two walkie-talkies.
One bottle of wine.
One road map of Lansing, Michigan.
One Dog Music Poetry book.
One kitchen towel.
One ElderHostel catalogue for 2008.
One calculator.
One Spartan Senior Citizen newsletter.
One exercise log.
One Burcham Hills Retirement Community brochure.
Two folders of Ferris State University conference materials.
Two overweight cats who like to play with small things.
And six Band-Aids.


Dad points to the table.  "How could it be in a safer place?!" he demands.


I don't know how to begin.  But I do anyway.  "Shoey might have been playing with it and knocked it off."
Dad is now crawling under the table with a flashlight.  He is adamant, "No, Shoey would have TOLD ME!!"


Shoey is one of the aforementioned cats.


At this point my Mother is standing in the kitchen doorway.  When Daddy straightens up, holding the flashlight but sans small plastic piece, her glare is something to behold.
Dad: "How was I supposed to know some guy was going to come in here and do something stupid with my piece of plastic?!"


It is at this point that the doorbell rings.  In storm four paratroopers with Uzies.  
"We're here for the child, ma'am," one of them says to Mom.
"What child?" Momma asks, "My youngest is 23."
"We don't make exceptions, ma'am.  We've been doing surveilance work and we've concluded there is no way this child could have received an emotionally healthy upbringing in this household.  We've been ordered to remove the child from this mental squalor and place her in a more nurturing environment."


The man brandishes the edict.
"This is what we do, ma'am.  Retroactive Child Protective Services.  Giving messed up young adults the chance to start over with a family who won't make them nuts."