Memoir-Getting Lost

Getting Lost
By Christine (Minerd) Smith
The author is the granddaughter of Ernest E. Minerd. Read her other memoirs.

I must have been around three years old. My family was spending Sunday afternoon at a church camp. We had just unloaded ourselves from the car, and my Dad and the boys took off in one direction. I started out with Mom and Grandma, but decided that I wanted to go with my father, instead. Mom said, “Go ahead, run and catch up with him.” I started off, but didn’t get too far before I realized how fast the male group was going. I stood on the path to ponder my position.

A very tall man stopped and asked if I was lost. The tallest person I knew was my Uncle Bob, so I figured this must be him, therefore I should be safe to go with him. He took me to a building and we climbed to the second floor. A man in a white dress shirt sat in front of a microphone. He asked me my name, and all I could answer was “Chrissy.” They asked if I could give them any more information, and I proudly answered that I had a dog named Tuffy.

So the man in the white shirt announced over the P.A. system that he had a lost little girl in a yellow dress, named Chrissy, with a dog named Tuffy. When they heard the news, my relatives came flying from both directions to retrieve me.

This incident became a beloved story of my childhood, which my parents would tell frequently, the story of how I became lost, and my entire family came running to my rescue, because they wanted me, even the fabricated Uncle Bob.