As a child, I had an imagination that made it particularly difficult to pay attention to anything real for longer than a minute or two. I had an imaginary world that constantly distracted me from the real world. Unless what was happening was extremely interesting such as setting off firecrackers, my face would tilt away from the action and I would be off into a daydream. This made things like car rides much more bearable but interfered quite a bit in things like school. It was amazing that I could learn anything at school seeing as how the drone of my teacher's voice was like a siren call into the magical mystery world inside my own head.
In an unflattering way, my inattention had a 'tell' to those observing it. My head would typically tilt to my right and I would become unconscious of my jaw muscles allowing them to relax and my mouth to fall open. Yes, my 'tell' was that I looked like a gaping idiot. I am sure this was the hardest on my mother who, knowing I was potentially quite intelligent, was always getting sympathy looks from people around her. This was well before things like attention deficit disorder or ADHD were a common diagnosis. At that time they were likely to think, 'Poor woman, having to care for that gaping idiot of a child'.
The worst thing about being so prone to daydreams was getting lost. It happened a lot and each time the 'getting lost' episode would turn me into a hysterical crying child which frustrated my mother no end. She and I would be in a store together and she would be looking at dresses while I tried to help her. After about the fifteenth time of showing her a dress, I think she would like and her just glance over it and move on to another I would get bored. Then would come the head tilt and gaping maw. Next thing I would know she would have disappeared. An observer would have seen something like this: Mother and child walking together down a rack of clothes. Child perpetually shows mother ugly dresses which mother ignores. The child goes into zombie-like trance. Mother placidly moves on down the row of clothes to the next row and then the next row. The child remains in a zombie trance for several minutes then awakens. The child no longer sees her mother and begins to panic. The child runs to end of the row and begins to cry. A concerned salesperson takes the crying child by the hand. The mother hears a crying child and comes to the end of the row to see her blubbering child being comforted by a salesperson. The salesperson gives the mother a pitying look for being the parent of a defective child.
My mother would become silently furious at me during these incidents and refuse to comfort me saying I should pay more attention. Lest you think she was some sort of hard-hearted parent it must be said that my 'getting lost' episodes were entirely age-inappropriate. When I was much younger, the getting lost rarely if ever happened because I was either physically restrained by my mother or else she kept an eagle eye on me as would any caring parent. These episodes happened after I was already school age, a point in time I am sure a parent looks to as a point where the children become more capable and therefore potentially less of a worry. They think, "Well I don't have to hold my child's hand anymore because they can be expected to stick around." Not me.
It also didn't help that my mother would be an easy-to-find distance away from anyone but me, the defective child. The problem was that I would panic. The moment I would awaken from my fog, find that while I had daydreamed the world had changed, made me feel very afraid. To me, it seemed mere seconds had passed but in reality, it could be minutes. I would frantically look around while feeling a growing panic grip me and then the tears would start which of course made vision much more difficult. If only the first time something like this had happened I could have found my mother perhaps that would have solved the problem. Perhaps if I had not been 'rescued' by store personnel I would have learned an important 'getting yourself unlost' survival trait. Perhaps if my mother had not been so totally embarrassed by her defective child she would have been able to emote something to me other than cold disdain. Perhaps if any of these things had happened other than what did happen I would not have gone on to develop a 'getting lost' form of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Ultimately each episode became far more traumatic to me and my reaction from noticing I am lost to a hysterical weeping child took less and less time.
It just kept happening. My parents became fed up with me. Now, these days with all our careful nourishment of mental health and all I am sure a child psychologist would have been consulted. Perhaps the psychologist could have explained to my parents that I was not deliberately trying to get lost. Perhaps some sort of behavior modification could have been used on me to teach me how not to panic. None of this happened but my parents did take matters into their own hands.
The incident that they created occurred when I was about 9 years old. My latest getting lost episode had happened as my girl scout troop had been on a group outing at Astroworld amusement park. My mother was one of the scout leaders and my sister and I belonged to her troop. We set out for a day of fun-filled play and I nearly spoiled it all by becoming lost. My sister had been told to keep an eye out for me and luckily she found me before I broke down completely. Although it didn't quite spoil my day both my mother and sister were disgusted with me. I had once again played little girl lost and they were fed up with it.
The following weekend my entire family went to Sears. This was a two-story store with an escalator in the middle of the store. We entered from one floor and rode the escalator to a lower floor. Everything was just fine and we were moving as a group, but then I happened to glance at something on a table. When I looked back up my family had vanished. Now since the incident at Astroworld, I was particularly attuned to not getting lost. I was, for me, being very attentive. The thing was, I had not been daydreaming, and yet they were gone.
It was as if something grabbed me in my chest and I looked around trying to find a glimpse of them. My arms and legs felt stiff and unresponsive as I frantically peered about. They were nowhere. The escalator's steps made a sullen whoosh, whoosh sound in the background. Could they have gone back up the escalator I wondered feeling more and more fear? By this point, my vision was getting sharper and more tunneled due to the massive amounts of adrenalin my body was releasing. I approached the escalator with dread. Suddenly my family jumped out of hiding and began laughing at me. Inside me, my growing panic became surprise, relief, and then anger. I began to cry as they laughed. "That's what you get for not paying attention," they sang out.
I blew up. "How could you?" I wailed, "How could you? Don't you know how much this scares me?" I was heartbroken and crying. My family muttered something about how it was my fault and that I should pay more attention. I cried back "I tried. I can't. I can't pay more attention!" They wouldn't look at me. I whimpered and cried my way out of the store with them. Although they were disgusted with me I think they realized they had made a mistake. You don't tease the defective child. I think for them this was the first time they ever considered that 'something' might be 'wrong' with me. I did not get any sympathy from them, but they also never pulled anything like that with me again either.
Strangely enough, that was the last of the 'getting lost' episodes I was to experience growing up. I am sure it was not just that I improved my being attentive skills although I tried. I think they started treating me differently perhaps without even knowing it. My mother especially I think began to keep a closer watch over me. I may have been her 'foolish' child but she didn't want to lose me.
Things fade in time but once established they take on a life of their own. These days if I lose track of someone I am with while we are in a store, I still have an unreasonable amount of panic. I don't break into tears or anything but still, I am on edge until I can locate them again. Today though my 'getting lost' usually only happens when I am driving. I have learned to get myself 'unlost' in these instances seeing as how my car is not equipped with helpful salespeople.
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