Getting lost is scary for everyone ~ October 1, 1992

David Heiller

It happened so fast. One moment Noah was there, 20 feet in front of me, heading for the crowded jousting ring at the Renaissance Festival.

“Boy, it would sure be easy to lose a kid here,” I thought. “Good thing it’s Noah.” Good old trustworthy, sensible Noah.

Noah might have fit right in at the
 Ren-fest with all the acrobats.

In about two seconds, I reached the spot where Noah had slipped into the crowd. I scanned the throng of people, hundreds and hundreds, sitting and standing and watching an old-fashioned jousting match.

I tried not to feel the butterflies that turned in my stomach as I realized that Noah was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Noah?” Cindy asked as she and Malika caught up with me a minute later. She had a worried sound in her voice that I hadn’t heard before. Just like that. I hadn’t said a word, but she read my face and knew he was lost.

“He was right here a few seconds ago. He’s got to be right here,” I said in my most reasonable voice.

But he wasn’t. We looked carefully through the crowd of people jammed side to side and shoulder to shoulder. Cindy walked in front of them, up and down the first aisle, her worried eyes flicking back and forth. I stayed where Noah had disappeared, thinking he would surely have enough sense to find us again.

Minutes passed. Five, ten, fifteen. Time slowed down. Perceptions changed. Music seemed to die down. The sun slipped behind a cloud.

Noah

I tried to imagine what it would be like for Noah, looking up at all these big people. I felt dizzy and frightened. I realized it would be easy to lose your direction at a height of four feet.

Cindy and I didn’t know what to do. Should we shout his name, make a scene; disrupt the show and all those people? No, we didn’t want to panic. It wasn’t time to panic. Not yet. He^’s got to be right here.

Reason tried to prevail. Nothing’s going to happen. He’s right around here. Someone will find him, bring him back to this area. This is the Renaissance Festival in Chaska, Minnesota. He knows where we were standing, next to the jousting match.

We thought those thoughts, calmly, yet all the while the thought nagged somewhere behind it: What if...

Cindy headed farther out, away from the jousting ring. She was gone five minutes. By now 40 minutes had passed. Then I saw her coming up a hill. She was holding Noah’s hand. Both of them were crying.

We all hugged, big, lingering hugs. I can’t explain the relief I felt. It was like a weight was lifted off my back and chest, a weight that hurt, that buzzed in my head. Color came back into the air, into the bright costumes of the lords and ladies. Music started up again. Suddenly it was a glorious day at the fair.

Noah and his buddy Joe exploring
 the wonders of Walkie-Talkies

Noah explained what had happened. He hadn’t ducked into the crowd like I had thought. He had kept walking along the edge, thinking we were right behind like we had been all day. When he finally stopped and saw we weren’t there, he waited for 10 minutes or so, then did the sensible, trustworthy thing we suspected that he would. He went to a stand, and told the girl working there that he was lost.

“She contacted a person with a Walkie-Talkie, and he could talk to anyone with a Walkie-Talkie,” Noah explained later. Walkie-Talkie’s carry a lot of weight with nine-year-old boys, and with their parents. That’s how Cindy found him.

I IMAGINE THIS KIND OF THING happens fairly often at a place like the Renaissance Festival. There were 27,217 people there on Sunday alone.

I know of friends who have had similar experiences, losing a kid at a fair, or wandering off in the woods for a while. It doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

But I’ve never quite understood what goes on inside a parent’s head, until last Sunday. It’s not a feeling I’d like to experience again.