A Day I'll Never Forget

by Ned
(Seattle)

This is perhaps my most powerful childhood memory, which is strange, because I can’t remember how the story ends. I just know how it felt. My mother sometimes used to take us to a neighbor’s house to play with her kids while she ran errands or took care of things. We didn’t go to this neighbor’s terribly often, so we didn’t know them very well. On this occasion, I was about five.

Everyone else was inside and I was outside riding one of the neighbor children’s bikes (I didn’t have a bike of my own). When I was done, I pulled the bike up the stairs to leave it on the porch. In doing so, I accidentally knocked one of the plant pots off the stairs and it broke. I had absolutely no idea what to do. All I can remember is leaving the bike on the porch and running home. Of course, there was nobody there. I decided to just go along the side, where there was a path lined with fuscias leading into the back yard.

I don’t know what I thought I was doing, but my idea was to just wait until my mom came home. After that, I don’t remember anything, not my mom coming home or us telling the neighbor or anything. In fact, I don’t even know how long I waited or if we were taken back to their house again.