My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.

Browsing Category Strange Happenings

Trying to Connect the Pieces

by on ·Cousins, Family, General, Strange Happenings

A few days ago, I got an IM on Facebook from my cousin, Velda. But, unfortunately, there was no note, just a photo of a certificate that appears to have been yellowed by age. At first glance, I thought, “Why is she sending this to me?”

I examined the document more closely, letting my eyes slide down the page until they reached the name beneath the words:  This is to certify that . . . .

My antennae went up. Wait a minute! I thought. Rewind. Reread the page. The name on the line above the signatures of four officials affiliated with the program offered by the DC Public Schools’ Department of Industrial and Adult Education was mine.

The certificate, dated January 20, 1966, was presented for completion of a 12-hour course in Individual and Family Survival. I stared at it for the longest time. I couldn’t recall ever seeing that document before, but my maiden name in my handwriting leaped at me from the signature line. But how? When? I drew a stupefied blank.

Granted that it was nearly a hundred years ago (You all stop calculating. Of course, I’m exaggerating, give or take a few decades. LOL), my mind is still relatively keen, and I like to think I would remember taking that course. After all, I still remember that Mr. Simmons, the Business Ed teacher, was, in my opinion, the most handsome and sexiest teacher in our high school, but that’s a post for another time.

Since the resurrected certificate was dated six months before I graduated from high school, I can only surmise that it may have been a class compulsory for meeting graduation requirements. But wow! Who would have thought? And what was the relevance of a course in Individual and Family Survival? Considering the decade, a civil defense Duck and Cover course might have been more appropriate. However, since the certificate shows that the study was presented by the Office of Civil Defense Adult Education, perhaps it was developed to show us how to prepare ourselves and our future families for emergencies or nuclear disasters. I doubt if I would have voluntarily taken what appears to be a mundane course unless I was under the duress of not graduating for lack of required credits.

I instant-messaged Velda and asked how she got the certificate. She said she discovered it while cleaning out one of her mom’s closets. Of course, then I wanted to know how her mom, my Aunt Imogene, got possession of it. Velda said it was inside an old photo album that had belonged to one of our deceased uncles, Uncle Henry. Velda’s mom is married to one of Uncle Henry and my dad’s brothers.

Of course, the next question was how Uncle Henry got it. Although he had lived in the same city as my family and me for years before he moved to North Carolina, I doubt if my mom and dad would have given it to him. As I discovered when my sister and I were clearing out my parents’ home following our mother’s death in 2014, mother kept nearly every report card, honor roll certificate, and other achievement documents that my siblings and I acquired while in school.

Since my parents are deceased and Uncle Henry died over 20 years ago, I will probably never learn how my certificate traveled from my parent’s home and wound up over 250 miles away inside the photo album where Velda discovered it. But I sure would like to know. And it may seem coincidental to those who believe in coincidences (I don’t) that Velda, the Parker family genealogist, would be the one to discover a piece of my personal history. Well, Shazam, Cuz!

There is an old aphorism that holds much truth: “Life is a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing.” I would include “with some disjointed pieces that don’t seem to fit.”

Thanks, Cuz, for adding another disjointed piece to the jigsaw puzzle of my life.

0 Comments

Things That Go Bump in the Night

by on ·Food for Thought, General, Strange Happenings

A strange thing happened to me this morning. Talk about weird occurrences.

As I often do while lying in bed between snoozes, I had a flash of inspiration. It was around 4 AM. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my laptop, and hurried to the dining room table. Before taking a seat, I switch on the kitchen light but leave the dining room light off. My concentration is sharpest when I’m writing in a dimly lit room. I set the laptop on the table, open it, and begin typing. I’m anxious to save the thoughts in my head to the hard drive before I forget them.

My fingers are burning up the keyboard, and I’m enjoying myself in the creativity zone. The early morning hours are my favorite time of the day; it’s when I am most inspired. It’s quiet outside and indoors. For the time being, no noisy emergency vehicles are flying up and down the streets with sirens wailing. No neighbors chattering or children playing loudly outside. The phone isn’t ringing. The TV is off. In my bliss, I recall a line from a Christmas story – “not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” I glance at the clock. It’s 5:12.

Satisfied that I have saved my story ideas to my hard drive, I click on Facebook and scroll down the page. Then, I click my photos. The first image my eyes land on is a favorite picture of my mother that I posted last Saturday in observance of what would have been her 95 birthday. I decide that I don’t want anyone to steal that photo. (Of course, I realize it’s already too late. Everyone knows that once a picture is posted on social media, it becomes fair game for anyone who wants to copy it.) Still, I decide to delete it. I select the image and tap the delete button on the keyboard. A message on the screen warns me, “Deleting this photo will also delete the post.” Additional instructions about how to delete just the photo and not the post are available if I click “Learn more,” but I don’t click it. Thanks, but no thanks for the warning Facebook. I delete the photo, my message, and all of the appreciated comments from my friends and relatives.

As soon as I delete the post before I even lift the finger that pressed the delete key, I hear a sound like something has fallen near me in the room. Without turning my head, I swing my eyes toward the sound. I am sitting at the dining room table in front of the door leading into the kitchen. The kitchen light behind me and the light on the laptop monitor is the only illumination in the otherwise dark room. And I know the only other person at home is asleep in the bedroom, so I ask myself, “What was that noise?”

I have a pair of 8-by-8-inch canvas African art pieces hanging near the door leading into my apartment, so I think that perhaps the hook came loose, and one of the pieces fell off the wall. I lean back in the chair, reach for the light switch on the wall and flip it on. Then I look toward the door. And I see it, the source of the noise.

The little wooden bird that perches on the console table with my other ornamental animals, a parakeet, and a turtle (my menagerie, I call it), has fallen to the floor. I wonder, how did that happen? Is it possible that the stems on my philodendron plant had a sudden growth spurt and tipped the bird over? Nah. But maybe so. A few days ago, while watering my plant, I picked up a stem extending to the floor and gently laid it over the bird. The stem on my house plant isn’t strong enough to knock a wooden bird or any other inanimate object off that table. I’ve got to stop reading Stephen King.

My rational and imagination wrestle over the issue.

Fact – Immediately after I deleted my mother’s photo, the bird fell (or was knocked off the table by something). Nothing has ever fallen off of that table except one time after a house guest accidentally bumped the table while walking past it. So, how did the bird get off the table and onto the floor? It didn’t fly.

My mother, for religious reasons, did not observe birthdays. I do. Last Saturday, I posted a photo with a message acknowledging mom’s birthday on Facebook. The post generated several kind comments and “Happy Heavenly Birthday” remarks from my friends and relatives.

Imagination – During the days that the birthday message for my mother was posted on Facebook, could it have been transmitted beyond the grave? Did mother see it?

“You know I don’t observe birthdays.” She used to repeat that so often I can still hear her saying it. “But ma, I do,” I’d reply. Did mom’s spirit flick the bird off the table as a playful yet ghostly way of showing me that she knows I continue to acknowledge her birthday?

Okay, enough with the spookiness. Still, I need an explanation. That bird has perched on that table in the same spot for years and has never flown the coop, so to speak. No one was stomping downstairs in the hallway of the building. There was no large truck rumbling by outside. I didn’t feel an earthquake, tremor, or anything that would cause the building to vibrate. The only movement in the room was my fingers tapping on the keyboard. No matter how I try to come up with a reason for how the bird wound up on the floor, I can not. Guess I’ll have to settle for it being a fluke. Stuff happens.

Halloween is two days away. I wonder, are the ghosts (even the holy ones) and goblins already haunting?

2 Comments

What Would You Do?

by on ·General, Strange Happenings

Have you ever experienced something that haunts you for hours or days?  For example, around 6:45 this morning, I was in my bedroom getting dressed to go to an appointment when I thought I heard a child calling for his mom outside my open window. Maybe it was a child and his mother passing by and the kid was toddling far behind her, I thought. But then, as I was pulling my blouse over my head, I heard the voice shouting. “Mom!”

Why I wondered, would a child be outside this time of morning and calling for his mom? Was he alone and lost? Where was his mom? My first instinct was to throw on a coat, go get the child, bring him inside and call the police.

As I hesitated, he called again. “Mom.”

I muted the TV, dimmed the lamp, walked to the window, and cautiously opened the blinds, enough so that I could peek through them but be unseen. There he was, standing outside the locked wrought iron gate securing our complex, about 40 feet from my window, facing in my direction.

I studied him as he called for his mother again. He didn’t say anything else, just that one word — mom. And although he sounded like a small child, the young man looked to be about 15. He was tall and thin, about 5 foot 8, weighing around 110 pounds. He was wearing a shiny, black jacket that was partially zipped but opened enough near the top so that I could see that he was wearing a white, round-neck shirt beneath it.

The temperature displayed in the bottom right corner of my TV screen showed a chilly 46 degrees, so I was surprised that the teen was wearing black shorts, or perhaps he had his pants legs rolled up above his knees as some teenage guys do. I couldn’t be sure. Nevertheless, I could see his bare skin from his knees down to the top of the black socks that were extending to his mid-calves. He also had on black sneakers. I couldn’t see his face clearly in the pre-dawn hour, but judging by his near white—but not quite – complexion, he appeared to be Latino or Asian, and he had coal-black straight hair with sort of a ragged bowl cut.

As I stood looking at him and trying to decide what to do, he called out again for his mom. Should I call the police and tell them a lost or confused teenager is outside my window calling for his mom. But that might mean I’d have to wait – Lord knows how long – for them to arrive, and then I’d be late for my appointment.

“Mom!”

Was mom the only word of English that he knew?

I told myself I’d need to remember what he was wearing, in case later that day an Amber alert was broadcast for a young teen fitting his description.

I left the window for a few minutes to continue getting ready to leave. When I went back to the window and looked out, the boy was gone. Although I could not see him, I knew that he was still on the block, perhaps further down the street, because, occasionally, I would hear him calling for his mom from a distance. I finished getting dressed, put on my shoes and jacket, and went outside to look for him. I cautiously stayed inside the gate, but I did not see him. After a few seconds, I went back inside and then heard him again. “Mom.”

It was haunting.

I’ve lived in the city all of my life, so suspicion has become part of my nature. I wondered if it was a setup. Was someone using him as a decoy to lure an adult to his aid so they could rob the person or do something worse? We cannot be too careful these days. It’s the world we live in. Few people are to be trusted, and things are not always as they seem.

“Mom.”

This is weird, I thought. I looked out of the window and there he was again, back near my window and about to step off of the curb in front of an approaching car. The driver came to a stop as the teen kept walking as if he was in a trance. I continued to watch the boy as he reached the other side of the street. He began to walk south, and I rushed from the northernmost window to the window on the east side and watched until he walked out of my line of sight.

Questions flooded my mind. Did he see someone down the street that he knew or who knew him? Did he suddenly remember where he lives? Where did he come from, and how did he end up in this neighborhood? Is there an AMBER alert out for him? Does he have autism? Where does he live?

I began to hurry to get myself together, so I would not be late for my appointment. Minutes later, I called UBER, put on my jacket, and walked outside. From inside the fence, I looked up and down both sides of the street, but I did not see or hear the strange young man. I looked around again before climbing into the UBER.

At the end of the day, I still could not forget him.

I hope that he is okay. I hope that he found his mom or she located him. If he were a small child, I would probably have thrown caution to the wind and immediately gone outside to assist him or at least called the police. But I heeded my intuition because he appeared to be in his teens. Unfortunately, the times in which we live make it difficult to trust anyone. I know that adult criminals have been known to use children as bait for potential crime victims.

I feel in my heart that I should have helped him, but life has taught me – don’t trust anyone unless they have earned your trust. And always, ALWAYS follow your intuition.

What would you have done?

 

0 Comments