If you refer to the title of this post, you can see I used the title of the old Disney channel segments in which kids would tell their “The Time I…” stories. I was feeling pretty nostalgic and decided it would be cool to tell a story from my own life. Now, my memory is terrible. I honestly have a huge memory loss gap in which I can’t remember anything before 2009. Considering I was 7 years old and probably living an easy-going and unbothered life, I don’t think anything truly exciting happened. However, I do have vivid memories of major events in my life. In this case, the one I most remember is the time I got lost at the zoo.
The time I got lost at the zoo had to be the first encounter with true fear. It was a school trip (shoutout Mcwillie Elementary in Jackson, MS!) to the zoo and it was the entire 3-6 age group of the school. Let me pause and explain this “group.” The elementary school I attended had grades split by ages in the lower school. There was a 3-6 group in which there were literally 3-6 year olds. This was the pre-K and kindergarten groups. To this day, I don’t understand why they couldn’t just refer to us by our actual grades, but it’s in the past now. Okay now we are resuming the story. So, like any other trip, we took the big yellow to the Jackson Zoo. We had on the same t-shirts to help identify any lingering kiddos if the situation occurred (it did by the way LOL). We were walking around the zoo, oohing and ahhing at all the animals that were trapped in their cages.
Side note: Even then I never liked the idea of seeing animals in cages, no matter how “protected” they are.
My mom had planned to meet us at the zoo. She wanted to eat lunch with me. Let me emphasize that she wanted to eat lunch with JUST me. So, when she came to the zoo, we broke from the group and sat in a mini sandbox and ate our lunch. After a while of eating, my mom wanted to take pictures with the wood cut outs in the sandbox. These were the cut outs where you put your face in the hole and the rest is a silly image of a mans body or a bears body. In this case it was a giraffe. After having our mini photoshoot, my mom had to go back to work. After seeing the group not to far away from us, my mom trusted me to make the short (and I mean so short, like literally a 60 second walk) back to the group. Me, the ever so trustworthy child, decided to make a short detour on my way back. I can’t remember what caught my eye, but when I started back towards the group again—they were gone. I can still remember the fear that ran through my body. So many questions bounced in my small head. Is someone going to kidnap me? Will I be lost forever in the zoo? Will I eventually pull a Tarzan and become one with the animals and live the rest of my days with them? While in the midst of panicking, I started walking around the zoo to find the many blue shirts that were in my group. Probably 10 minutes later, I found the group again. In that span of 10 minutes I completely accepted the fact that I was going to be lost forever. The joy in my heart when I saw those blue shirts was through the roof. I was so happy that I ran back to the group. The group had been sitting down almost as if they were at a stopping point. Little did I know, they were searching for me. I can still remember hearing, “Ms. *****! There’s Morgan!” *I’m going to leave the name of my past teacher out* The fury in the eyes of my teacher when she saw me would make a bull scared. I was pulled to the side and got a good ole reprimanding. I’m sure that if spanking was allowed at the school, I would have surely fall subject to it. I was so upset and ended up crying so hard. My teacher didn’t even let me get a popsicle like all the other kids like???? I get lost and I don’t get a popsicle????? To this day, I still get mad at that.
After the trip ended and we were back at school, I wanted nothing more but to go home. I was so relieved to see my mom pull into the school to pick me up. That was the first day I didn’t have anything to say on the car ride home. My mom knew something happened, but she never did ask me about it. I still appreciate the fact that my mom knows when not to ask me about things when I get upset. I actually don’t think I ever told her this story, which is pretty funny to me.
I hope you guys enjoyed this little story of mine. I like this idea and will most likely do it again in the future. I’m actually saw an idea to challenge your readers SO my challenge is for you to write your own “The time I…” story and share your stories with us!
Lol, I remember you telling me this story! This post brought me joy to read!
Oh my gosh! I literally loved this. I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten lost. I mean, dang. Walmart, Dollar General, the Mall. As a kid, I never understood the whole searching for parents situation. I would just stand in place, and cry.