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Proof of Life
By Stephanie Kemp
Proof of Life
By Stephanie Kemp
Poor Grown Ups.
One night in 1974 I was sledding down the front stairs in my new sleeping bag when I heard my mom telling my sister that we were having BLTs for dinner.
This was the worst news ever, unless I could convince my mom to get rid of the L and T, which would be difficult but not impossible, especially if my dad was going to be home late. (At seven, I still had fairly limited knowledge and ability when it came to categorizing bad news.)
I went in to the kitchen and pretended to be interested in what Walter Cronkite was trying to tell us through our tiny, tinny tv, eager to assess the situation.
All I heard was “Proof of Life” and I was on a mission.
I promptly forgot about the dire dinner coming down the pike and ran upstairs to start my Proof of Life Box, not hearing the rest of the story about what had happened to an almost grown up named Patty Hearst.
When my mom called us to the table, I brought the box, now filled with my most important treasures (as well as a few stolen items from my sisters’ rooms buried on the bottom), but no one even noticed my box.
My sisters were both already at the table, signaling to me with their eyes that something was wrong and that dinner might not be that fun tonight.
I sat down (my dad was there, as were the lettuce and tomato), and my parents talked over us (this was rare - we usually had pretty good dinner conversations), about the 19 year old newspaper heiress who had been kidnapped from her college apartment in San Francisco and was being held for something called ransom.
I clearly hadn’t been paying very close attention because when my older sister asked what ransom was, I immediately thought it might be a good way to get some money from my sisters if they wanted their items from my Proof of Life Box returned safely.
I did start paying attention when my mom got weepy thinking about one of her daughters being kidnapped.
Things only got more confusing from there, as my dad explained that what Patty Hearst’s kidnappers wanted as ransom was for her rich family to help feed the homeless people in California.
That was it.
I was out.
What the hell are Grown Ups doing?
In that moment, I learned 3 things:
2. I preferred my box full of favorite things as my Proof of Life and hoped no one I loved or knew would ever be in need of the other kind.
3. It must be hard to be a grown up. You have to pay attention to things like the news, be the bad guy at the dinner table, worry forever that something bad might happen to your kids and explain scary things to them without making them too terrified to keep going out into the world.
Oh - and one more thing:
You don’t have to get rid of your Proof of Life Box when you are a grown up. In fact, you shouldn’t.
Ever.
Because as it turns out, it’s as real as the other kind, only more optimistic.
(And at the end of the day, we all want to remind the world that we were here).
One night in 1974 I was sledding down the front stairs in my new sleeping bag when I heard my mom telling my sister that we were having BLTs for dinner.
This was the worst news ever, unless I could convince my mom to get rid of the L and T, which would be difficult but not impossible, especially if my dad was going to be home late. (At seven, I still had fairly limited knowledge and ability when it came to categorizing bad news.)
I went in to the kitchen and pretended to be interested in what Walter Cronkite was trying to tell us through our tiny, tinny tv, eager to assess the situation.
All I heard was “Proof of Life” and I was on a mission.
I promptly forgot about the dire dinner coming down the pike and ran upstairs to start my Proof of Life Box, not hearing the rest of the story about what had happened to an almost grown up named Patty Hearst.
When my mom called us to the table, I brought the box, now filled with my most important treasures (as well as a few stolen items from my sisters’ rooms buried on the bottom), but no one even noticed my box.
My sisters were both already at the table, signaling to me with their eyes that something was wrong and that dinner might not be that fun tonight.
I sat down (my dad was there, as were the lettuce and tomato), and my parents talked over us (this was rare - we usually had pretty good dinner conversations), about the 19 year old newspaper heiress who had been kidnapped from her college apartment in San Francisco and was being held for something called ransom.
I clearly hadn’t been paying very close attention because when my older sister asked what ransom was, I immediately thought it might be a good way to get some money from my sisters if they wanted their items from my Proof of Life Box returned safely.
I did start paying attention when my mom got weepy thinking about one of her daughters being kidnapped.
Things only got more confusing from there, as my dad explained that what Patty Hearst’s kidnappers wanted as ransom was for her rich family to help feed the homeless people in California.
That was it.
I was out.
What the hell are Grown Ups doing?
In that moment, I learned 3 things:
2. I preferred my box full of favorite things as my Proof of Life and hoped no one I loved or knew would ever be in need of the other kind.
3. It must be hard to be a grown up. You have to pay attention to things like the news, be the bad guy at the dinner table, worry forever that something bad might happen to your kids and explain scary things to them without making them too terrified to keep going out into the world.
Oh - and one more thing:
You don’t have to get rid of your Proof of Life Box when you are a grown up. In fact, you shouldn’t.
Ever.
Because as it turns out, it’s as real as the other kind, only more optimistic.
(And at the end of the day, we all want to remind the world that we were here).