Moving

On a 30-year-old piece of yellowed paper, printed on a dot matrix printer, is the first "story" I ever wrote. It's only seven lines long. Written by an 8-year-old, the most impressive thing about it is that all of the words are spelled correctly. It wasn't even written for a "writing" assignment. I wrote it in computer class.

So why did my mother keep this piece of paper for three decades? Because this innocent piece of paper, or at least the seven lines on it, resulted in a story my family still talks about today.

Shortly after my father left the Air Force, our family returned to the small town where my parents had grown up. Being in their 20s with four children, renting was much more feasible than buying. Little did my parents know, the house they were renting still had a mortgage, and though they were paying rent to our landlord, he wasn't paying the mortgage. My parents didn't know anything was wrong until the bank served an eviction notice on the property. My parents did their best to shield us kids from all of this. We were simply told that we'd be moving in with my grandparents until we could find another house. Being 8 years old though, I listened to more than I should have to my parent's "grown-up" conversations.

So, in the midst of all of this chaos, my computer class was given an assignment. Type and print a short story about your life. These seven lines are what I proudly turned in. I don't remember the teacher approaching me after I handed in my assignment. I can't recall anyone at the school asking me about it. What I do remember, is that within a week a social worker with Child Protective Services was at our house.

I imagine at the time my parents must have been terrified. They were already going through so much and now this out of nowhere. Thankfully they were able to explain the situation and the investigation was closed.

To this day, one of my family's favorite stories is how Kelly got CPS called with a seven-line story.