Christine over at A Mommy’s Story, brought a incident from my childhood back to mind. I never thought ANYTHING of this incident, but my mother totally freaked out. Now that I am a mother, I understand!
When I was about 5 years old (kindergarten) I LOVED to play in the snow. I wouldn’t hesitate to stop during my walk home from school to just lay down and play in the snow. When I was 5, it was safe for me to walk home alone. Anyhow, one day I was totally oblivious to everything around me and just having a fantastically good time making a snowfort or some such thing and a man stopped and asked to take pictures of me playing. What the heck? Sure, he could take pictures of me and he did, LOTS of pictures of me playing in the snow. What’s your name he asked…well, what the heck! I’m Diane Heller. What’s your name? And he wrote down my name. And where do you live Diane? What the heck! I live up there at 6615 Darlington and I pointed because I was only a half block from my house. And, I kept playing in the snow. And the man left, just drove away.
Now, it was well PAST the time I was supposed to be home from school and my mom was getting a bit freaked. She had my litle sister who was about 2 at the time and couldn’t just leave the house to look for me. I finally, got home close to 5PM and she was nuts. She had called the police and everything. Where have you been? Oh, I was outside on the corner playing in the snow and a nice man came and took lots of pictures of me and he asked my name and where I lived and I told him. Well, the police were very interested in all of this and took my description of the man and his car.
The next day, there on the front page of our local newspaper (The Sun Telegraph—now defunct), was a picture of me, playing in the snow, along with 6 other adults under the title: ” They’re Rugged but Wish for Warmth: How Outdoorsmen Dress for Cold” Byline: Charles Stetler. Under my picture: Couldn’t Get Too Cold For Her…Diane Heller enjoys snow, cold!
Can I tell you what kind of trouble poor Charles Stetler got into with the police, the editors and my parents????
We did get a bajillion copies of the newspaper though, and I STILL had fun playing in the snow.
Let’s see…countdowns (bwahahahahahahaha…they’re baaaaack!)
The Pittsburgh Deli 