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| This could have been me. |
When I was four, a "crazy lady" kidnapped me while I was visiting Brooklyn's Coney Island Amusement Park with my family. She quietly stole me away from my mother who was distracted at the time by paying for a Nathan's Famous hot dog and fries, telling me as we trotted off, "you're my little girl now." She seemed quite enamored of me, and certainly intended no harm. The worst thing about her was her messy housekeeping, as the single room she inhabited was crammed, floor to ceiling, with newspapers and trash. We stayed there overnight, sleeping on a pile of lumpy rags. The next morning when she took me out for breakfast at a nearby dumpster, I escaped into the crowd and was eventually returned to my rightful owners.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been had I stayed with that hobo crazy lady instead of going back to live with the
other crazy lady -- my real mother -- who may have done me more damage in the long run, for all I know. I would still have been me, but different. Tawdry, perhaps, but surely more interesting. I would have met an entirely different class of people than the striving, play-by-the-rules, ordinary folks who populated the insulated New York suburb where I grew up. I might have grown up to be a circus performer. Who knows -- I could have written a best-seller by now.
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