Perception vs. Reality on the Car Lot of Life

A recent comment on my blog made me think about a childhood experience. I guess I was 8 or 9 years old at the time.

My family lived in Greenville, Alabama, which is about 35 miles or so away from Montgomery, the state capital of Alabama. It might as well have been 3,000 miles away. My hometown was and is still very small, with a population of about 7,500–8,000 or so. Everybody knows everybody in my hometown, or at least it seems that way. Every time I got in trouble as a kid, it seemed the entire town knew about it…or they were the ones who told on me!

Growing up in Greenville was simplistic, at best. We played in the yard all year long. That’s about all there was to do. Our backyard would go from being a baseball diamond in the spring and summer to a football field in the fall and winter to a basketball court in the winter and spring. We rode our bicycles for hours and hours during the summer. We raised a garden in the back yard, one that my father always swore “Won’t be that big next year!” But, it was always as big, if not bigger the next year.

There was a small movie theater in town, and we often saw movies, not current releases, but the old favorites of bygone eras. There was a small skating rink and that rink provided many hours of going round in circles and dusting the floor with the seat of my Wrangler jeans.

There was no McDonalds or Wal-Mart or Kroger’s or Target or Starbucks (that’s for you Kevin). We did have an A & P grocery store and a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. We even had a Ben Franklin 5 & 10 store for much of my growing up days.

However, for the real excitement and fun, we had to go to Montgomery. Montgomery was where the Montgomery Mall was! It was huge—or so it seemed at the time. It probably only had 35–40 stores in it, and of course, we didn’t have anything like that in Greenville, heck, we didn’t even have 40 stores in all of Greenville!

I’ll never forget a trip that my mother, brother, and I took to the Montgomery Mall. We arrived early to shop. We parked our car up front and hurried inside to shop. We spent several hours shopping and exited the mall to find our car. As we walked out the door, my mother realized that the car was gone! It was no where to be found! We walked and walked and could not find the car! Finally, in desperation and tears, we went inside to the security stand and reported our stolen car to the police officer working the booth. He listened as my frantic mother told of our plight. He didn’t get frazzled in the least.

After my mother told him the entire story, he calmly asked, “Ma’am, what letter did you park under?” Letter? What letter was he talking about? My mother was clueless as to what he was talking about and said so. The very kind officer said, “Ma’am, our parking lot is very big and there are several exits out of our building. So, we’ve lettered the sections of the parking lot so people can remember easier where they parked.

Needless to say, we didn’t notice the letters when we parked our car. In Greenville, you parked your car, went in one door and out the same door! Who took into consideration multiple doors! Not us. Not the rednecks from south Alabama! Not my mother. Not my brother. Not me.

A few minutes later, with the help of the kind police officer, we found our car. Of course, it was right where we left it. Under the letter “M” by the way.

On the way home, no one was really talking too much. We were all still shaken by having our car “stolen.” About halfway home, my mother did speak. She said, “Don’t you dare tell your father about this!”

To this day, we still haven’t told him! And, you’d best not either!