Vague Recollections (II)

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I had a vague memory the other day. Just sort of, there.

We used to walk to A.J. Bayless, a grocery store in Arizona. If you got separated from your parents, you could go up to the register and they would call for them. While waiting, they would give you M & Ms.

Once, my mother and brother were going somewhere and left me behind with my father. I forget where they were going, but I decided they were at A.J. Bayless, and I left to go there and find them.

If my parents were still together, then I was age seven or under. Very young. The trip to A.J. Bayless involved walking down this alley-way, we always came around behind the store and the big dumpsters that we’d pick through for food.

So that’s the way I went, little seven or under me.

The way there was fine. Then, when I got to the store, I went up to the register and told them I was lost. I sat there and they gave me a handful of M & Ms that I ate as they called for my mother over the store address system.

Next to the grocery store was an ice cream store we used to go to sometimes, they had square scoops – not round. I always thought that was funny, a square lump of ice cream. But I always got the rainbow sherbet. Milk and I have never been friends, and it wasn’t until much later that I heard the term “lactose intolerant” – my mother always tried to get me to drink my milk- even though she later confided that she had to give me grey-soy milk as a child because I couldn’t tolerate milk even as an infant.

Anyway, after eating some M & Ms I left the store and went back home. On the way through the alley there was a kid (probably a teen) bouncing a basketball. He asked if I’d like to learn how to dribble. I told him no. He asked again if I wanted to play with the ball. I was a little frightened at that point, but just said ‘no’ again and kept walking and went home.

When I got back, I don’t even remember what happened. I think my father might have asked where I was, with me answering ‘out playing’ as a response. The guise of the memory is that I went looking for my mother, but that was what I said I was doing, not what I was really doing. I think I just wanted some M & Ms and to get out of the house. My mother had taken my brother to the fish store, and I knew that. Not the grocery store.