One Child's Inferno (True Story)

Yesterday, while visiting with family down in Virginia, a group of adults were trading stories about our childhood. When the topic came to running away, I had a funny story to tell...

--------------------------------------------------------

When I was about five years old, one of my brothers was a year behind me and another brother was a baby (my sister not yet born), my parents lived in this little house next to a vacant lot full of dry overgrown grass.

I was down in the basement; my brother and I were playing with play-dough pretending to bake it in the cold oven (as long as we didn't plug it in or turn it on). Then my nose caught the smell of something burning. I asked my brother if he smelled it too. He did and we checked to make sure it wasn't from the oven we were playing with.

Then the door at the top of the stairs burst open and my mother called down, "Kids! There's a fire! Get out of the house!"

I ran to the top the stairs and she grabbed my shoulder and turned me toward the front door. When I opened the front door, the flames shot quickly along the base of the dry hedges that bordered the property line between our tiny front yard and the vacant lot. With the tell-tale roar and crackle, the bushes when up - red and yellow flames flickering against the dark black plume of smoke rising behind them. That was enough to instill terror in a little five-year-old. So I ran!

My parents' little house was the first on a block that paralleled a highway (along our backyards), so while I was still too young to cross the street without someone, I could go a very long way (about 4 blocks) without crossing the street. With my little sneakers pounding the sidewalk, I ran!

Now I have been blessed with a great imagination since I was born, and sometimes that can be a curse as well. In my mind, there was this great inferno roaring around my parent's house, chasing me down this street. I envisioned my parent's house engulfed in flames and my family (who for some reason weren't running right behind me) were roasted alive in the ever-growing terror behind me.

About every three or four houses, I dropped to my knees and prayed to God, asking that He wouldn't let the fire get me and that He would keep my family safe. Then, imagination turned the warm breeze at my back that carried the scent of burning brush into something far more devastating, so I leapt to my feet and ran some more.

By the time I reached the end of the sidewalk at the intersection where I needed to cross the street to continue, I had tears running down my face, my hair was disheveled from constantly turning around to see if the fire was catching up to me.

As I walked those last few feet, too afraid to stop and kneel lest the fire catch me, I prayed, "God, I'm reaching the end of the block, now. I can't cross the street. Mommy and Daddy won't let me. I don't know what to do. Please help me."

Then I heard a very loud voice call out, "Tara?"

I jumped, startled out of my wits! Then I looked up and incredulously asked, "God....?"

The voice came again, even louder, "Tara?" It was clearly behind me.

I turned around -- slowly -- and spied a police car in the road beside me, the officer inside had the mic to the loudspeaker in his hand. "Are you Tara?"

I nodded. He pulled the car closer to the curb and opened the passenger side door for me. "Hop in, your mother sent me looking for you."

Chagrined, I got in the front seat of the police car (my grandfather was a NYC sergeant at the time, so it wasn't that strange a situation to me), and he drove me back down the four blocks.

When we got there, my mother was standing on the still-green front lawn before an untouched house with my two brothers - one was laughing at me. :P We only lost the hedge and a tree at the border and the neighboring lot was charred completely and smelt of brushsmoke for weeks after, but all was safe.

-------------------------------------------------------

As I finished telling this story, I looked around at my audience and noticed that it wasn't just the fellow adults who were standing in rapt attention to the story, but nearly a dozen kids were also there, listening to my every word.

When I woke up this morning, I realized that telling that story did more than just bring a few laughs to the gathering of family and friends; the kids there learned, by way of example, that it was OK to pray to God about anything and that they could trust God with their worries, even if it was something silly in the end....

- ESA