By Kiera Rich – KRich13@bellsouth.net
The summer that I turned 9, I met a new girl at the YMCA pool. Kari’s family had just moved to town and she was 9 too. It turned out that we lived just a few blocks from each other. We became fast friends and spent our entire summer scheming about how we could end up in the same 4th grade class in the fall.
We did end up in the same class and became even more inseperable. I loved going to Kari’s house because she had a waterbed. She loved coming to my house because we had a tire swing. Kari stuck up for me when I got a bad perm one weekend and stood by me in P.E. when I couldn’t do a cartwheel to save my life. (By the way, I STILL can’t do a cartwheel. It didn’t ruin my life.) I helped Kari study for our Social Studies test, the one she had to get at least a B on or risk being grounded; and, I sat with her as she cried when her hamster died.
We were, to all the world, best friends.
I remember getting on the bus one Friday morning and looking for Kari. She wasn’t there. She usually called me when her mom was going to take her to school but I wasn’t too worried.
When I got to school, I looked all over the playground for her. She wasn’t there either. I was a little worried.
Class started and still no Kari. I was a lot worried.
“Maybe she’s sick.” “Maybe she had a dentist appointment.” “Maybe she overslept.” All day long I went through every possible scenario I could think of.
And then on the bus, I heard a scenario that had never even crossed my mind. People were talking. It was the 6th grade boys, including Derek, who was Kari’s neighbor. The snippets of conversation that I heard made my blood run cold.
“Kari’s dad flipped out. Took the whole family hostage. The police have been there since the middle of the night. He won’t talk to them. They think he’ll probably kill the family and then himself. He wouldn’t even let the police bring groceries in. They don’t have any food.” Derek sounded almost happy to be the one delivering the news.
I was scared to death. Scared for Kari. Scared for myself and scared for the world that I was still too young to really understand. I got home and with my heart pounding wildly in my chest, I dialed Kari’s familiar number. Do people who are being held hostage answer the phone? The line was out of order.
That night, I was having a sleep-over with my cousins. They came for dinner and after dinner, we played some games. I really don’t remember what we played because my mind was not on the games. My mind was on a man who I had met and genuinely liked. A man who had taken me to the park and out for ice cream with his daughter. A man who had apparently lost his mind and was going to kill his family — including my best friend.
I lay awake long after both of my cousins had gone to sleep and I cried. I was extremely sad but more than that I was afraid of this new side of life that I was seeing. Sometime in the night, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I left my bedroom, stepping over the sleeping forms of my cousins who were in sleeping bags on the floor. I sat in the bathroom where I could have the light on without disturbing anyone. I hadn’t been afraid of the dark since I was 3 but that night, I was very afraid.
My tears changed from a slow, constant trickle to wracking sobs as I tried to understand, with my 4th grade mentality, a world that had, in a matter of hours, become sinisterly dark.
I’m not sure how long I sat in the bathroom before my dad got up. It took a long time and a lot of glasses of water before I could tell him why I was so upset. I told him everything Derek had said. My dad shook his head sadly. “That’s not what happened,” he said. “Kari is fine. Her dad is having a lot of money problems though and he’s been pretty upset.”
“But what about the police?” I asked. ”Everyone said they were at Kari’s house!”
“They were,” Dad told me. “They’re going to get Kari’s dad some help.”
I finally went back to bed, with the aid of a nightlight, and fell into an uneasy sleep.
The next day, after my cousins went home, I biked to Kari’s house and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. Several days later, I tried again with the same results. That time there was a fresh “For Sale” sign in the yard.
Kari never came back to school and I never saw her again. Several weeks after she left, I did get a Hanukkah card from her — which I thought was strange since neither one of us is Jewish. The postmark was from someplace in Minnesota but there was no return address. “I just wanted to tell you thanks for being a good friend. I’m fine,” the card read. “So is my dad.”
That was the last time I heard from Kari.
I did learn a lot from that incident. I learned that fear kept to oneself multiples at the rate of a million times per second. I learned that friends come and go but their memories stay with you forever. And I learned that things are not always what they seem.
A few days ago my husband got an email from a friend at church with a link to an amazing baseball catch. Click here if you haven’t seen this video. Jeff showed me the video and stated, “I’m skeptical.” This is nothing new. Jeff is skeptical often. But he’s also right often.
The next morning we received another email from this friend at church. This email contained a link to a snopes.com article about the “Amazing Catch” video. Sure enough, it was a fake. (Click here if you’re interested in the Snopes article.) The catch was filmed as part of a commerical for Gatorade. The catch with a catch has circulated all over the internet in recent weeks. Some people believed it. Some did not. Some sought out the truth. Some, like me, didn’t care enough to do so.
These two events – a traumatic event from my childhood and an innocuous email – have haunted me this week as I’ve listened to the news filled with the latest information on the upcoming Presidental election. And I use the term “information” loosely.
Everybody has a line. Everybody has an angle. Everybody has a story. But I can’t help but wonder, is anything really what it seems? Is anything true?
Some people believe everything they hear or read. Some do not. Some seek out the truth and some don’t care enough to do so.
I promised myself before I started writing today that this would not be a political blog. But as we enter the homestretch and head toward Election `08, I urge you not to believe everything you hear. I urge you to pray fervently, and to care enough to seek the truth.
In all honesty, the pending election scares me. The world feels so dark to me at times that it’s difficult to breathe. I’ve been doing a lot of praying and listening and sifting to find the “truth” — if such a thing still exists in this world.
But as for me, come election night, I’ll probably sleep with my nightlight on. How about you?
Author’s note: The names of “Kari” and “Derek” have been changed to protect the innocent. And a special note to Kari: You were a good friend, too. I still pray for you. Everyday.
