I Have Reason to Suspect

I used to think there were special people. People who knew what was going on in the world, even the universe. I guess it was only natural to think that someone must understand what is happening, after all, there is a great deal of order in the world. Things get made, food gets grown, books get written, laws get passed, traffic flows. It took a long time to figure out that such things are not happening because any human beings possess enough knowledge and intelligence to make it so.

When I was very young, people spoke of such special people with matter of fact surety. Adults seemed to know without a doubt that some people somewhere were orchestrating what happened in the world. There were ways one was to behave, information one was to learn, a future one was to expect and prepare for. There was a big picture reality going on under the watchful eyes of big picture people who saw what was real, and one got the impression that if one were very good, and tried very hard to understand, one could eventually be such a person, maybe.

But it was clear rather early on that I was not in the big picture group. The people I knew were clearly not running the show, and in fact were having a hard time running their own lives. Parents and other adults I came in contact with soon lost the special qualities I assumed somehow would be required to be in the big picture clan. They fought and cried and worried. I started to see that they were like me, and the special ones were "out there" somewhere, in the big buildings and wearing uniforms and driving important vehicles.

And one day my mom gave me a brown paper bag with food in it. And she told me to watch as she wrote on a small piece of paper. She told me those marks meant my name, and then she wrote a large curly cue and said it meant six. And she said I was going to be in the first grade, which made perfect sense to me. I had two older brothers who had been doing this sort of thing. She told me to find the room with that number on it, and she attached the piece of paper to the bag and sent me off to school.

I must have been to the school before, because I knew basically which sidewalks would get me there, sort of. I knew how to cross the streets, sort of. And I remember getting to a point where I could see for sure that I was at the school. But I was late and everyone was already inside it seemed. There was a tall chain linked fence and I didn’t know how to get inside it, and I was afraid I would be so late that I would not get to go to school, so I climbed over the fence. I slipped in a door, and after checking just a few doors in the long hallway within, I found one with the same number as my mom wrote, and I went inside.

There were a lot of kids in there, most of them sitting on little chairs that were attached to little tables. A lady in there saw me, and told me to put the bag on one of the shelves where many other bags were. I didn’t think this was a good idea because most of those bags looked just like mine and I didn’t see how mine would not get lost among so many, but I did as she told me. I sat down in a desk nearby and wondered when this school thing would start, and hoped I’d be able to find this room again, and my bag, when the time came to eat.

I was under the impression somehow that there was going to be someone to teach me things, but the morning wore on with nothing much more going on than the lady standing in the front of the room talking about things I already pretty much knew. Just a lot of silly stuff about the room we were in, and some of the stuff on the walls, and staying in lines, and going back to the same seats, and such.

I started to get worried that maybe I had gone to the wrong room, because it didn’t seem that anyone realized I was supposed to be learning about the sort of thing my mom had shown me, reading and numbers, and the big world. I was supposed to go to school, not sit here in this crowd of kids, listening to all these particulars about what this particular lady thought was interesting about this particular room. I hoped that when I finally got to the place I was supposed to have gone, I wouldn’t have missed too much. I hoped they would forgive me and understand that I tried my best to get there, and fill me in on what I had missed while sitting here too embarrassed to interrupt this lady to tell her I had blown it. I figured that by now they realized I was lost, but didn’t see how they could possibly find me in this strange waiting room, or whatever it was I had stumbled into in my anxiousness to get to school before it was too late.

I tried not to get too distracted by all the stuff the lady was going on about, sensing that it would just make it all that much harder to remember what I still hoped someone would soon be teaching me. I wondered what was the appropriate way to get back on track without making a spectacle of myself, or putting anyone to too much trouble. Finally there was talk of lunch, and some kids left because they were going to be getting food made at school. Then the kids who brought all the bags like mine were told to go get them, and line up to go to the place where people eat. All the other kids seemed to know all about this, and jumped up to get their bags. I waited till most had moved away from the shelves, figuring they would make it that much easier to locate mine.

But, when I went to where I had left my bag, there was only one left in that general area, and the little piece of paper was missing from it. And it wasn’t folded closed in the same way. It was not my little bag. Someone else had taken mine, but I didn’t want to stir up any more trouble than I figured I already had, so I took it and got in line. My plan was to slip away unnoticed at the first opportunity, and begin a search for the place I was supposed to be, figuring none of these folks here needed to know what had happened. So far no one there had really noticed me.

But the way to the eating place was rather short and simple, and the lady was hovering around the line of kids the whole time, telling any that strayed to get back in place. And now I realized my mission had been made more difficult, since I no longer had the note with the number on it. I saw other numbers on the doors as we walked, and while I felt fairly sure what mine looked like at first, I became doubtful when these shapes started piling up in my head. There seemed to be some numbers that were very different, but others were a lot like mine.

The bag I ended up with was definitely not the right one, and the food in it was not familiar or very good to eat. I became nervous about the whole situation. I considered trying to contact someone, but could not see anyone that wasn’t engaged in some task or other which seemed to occupy them, and make it seem bothersome to attempt to explain my petty troubles to. And it also began to seem that somehow the mistake may not have been mine to begin with. It started to dawn on me that no one here knew me at all. That no one here really seemed to care which kid was which, or what they were here for. It started to dawn on me that I was not going to the place where the special people were. I was not going to find out about the big picture here.

Still, somehow I thought I was seeing something about the big picture, the special people, the real world. And while I wasn’t sure, I suspected there was something very fishy about this supposedly well orchestrated reality. For here I sat, clearly not in the presence of people that understood me . . . little old me.