Learning to Wander

Stand, wobble, balance and step, milestones of a toddler learning to walk. Like most toddlers, after taking my first steps, I was soon waddling pathways to new places. At the age of one, I was also learning to wander. Life was new, the world yet to be explored. Without a guide to show me the way ahead, I was fortunate to wander into precarious predicaments and escape unscathed.

On a crisp autumn morning of my earliest year, I embarked on my first adventure through suburbia. With my family’s black Labrador retriever companion, Snuffy, the adventure began at the family homestead, a modest ranch house in a master planned community of similar ranch-style houses in Leawood, Kansas.

Grandma was visiting from Seward, Nebraska, a town of about 3,000 in the center of corn country. She proudly shared child care duties with my parents. Both my parents commuted 10 miles to Kansas City to work at the federal building, my mom for Social Security Administration, my dad for Housing and Urban Development. My brother, Kyle, attended the 5th grade of Corinth Elementary around the corner from the house.

With most of our neighbors away for the day, the block was quiet. Surrounded by a fence, Snuffy and I, shoulder-to-shoulder, crunched through a thick blanket of dry oak and maple leaves covering the zoysia of the 1-acre lot. Beneath an overcast sky, we paced rough circles around the backyard. Meanwhile, Grandma completed her crosswords and let her last cup of coffee cool on the table.

Except for the weeping mortar coated powder blue, the house was plain and the amenities few: no swing, no slide, and no sandbox. Only mature trees, whose leaves were changing from the color of fire to burnt brown and falling all around us. Snuffy and I casually passed the morning kicking up clouds of dust. I ran my hand across the fence and felt the chilly bumps of the chain link crisscrossing. Snuffy sniffed a path to the backyard gate, where our adventure began.

The gate was latched without a padlock. Snuffy simply set his nose beneath the latch, tossed it upward and then leaned into the gate as it swung open. Our way was clear. The gate opened to a gently sloping hillside, and we raced downward to a creek that cut a secluded path through the neighborhood. Its deep banks abutted backyards of the single family dwellings set up on their large lots. I ran alongside Snuffy with my hand planted firmly on his back, as he panted and lapped the fresh air.

Our freedom run was at once exhilarating and awful, for a one-year-old should not be left alone to toddle and wander, neither through wilderness nor suburbia. Grandma’s mindset, perhaps, needed to adjust to a more metropolitan way of life. The yards of her youth were surrounded by several strands of barbed wire intended to keep the horses corralled inside the pasture, whereas the yards of mine were enclosed by fencing that was at once ergonomic and aesthetically pleasant. As Snuffy and I galloped toward the woods, Grandma unwisely assumed that the boy and his dog were confined to the roost.

What Grandma did not realize was that Snuffy was well known to the local animal control authority. He had found his way through the gate before. My parents had to hold onto his collar and hold him back every time the front door opened. Sometimes the grip was not strong enough, and Snuffy would shake loose, bolt through the door and run off.

Snuff senses the front door about to open. Whenever someone was near the door, he could be found nearby, waiting to bolt.

Once through the gate, Snuffy and I experienced freedom together for the first time. Gaining momentum, we broke through the tree line at the edge of the creek, waded across the shallow water of the creek bed and grappled up to the pavement of the Prairie Village Public Works Department storage yard. The area was shaded and vacant, except for a dirty white semi trailer.

The Prairie Village Public Works Department parking lot is like a playground for a one-year-old. I was happy enough to be toddling anywhere on two feet.

After noticing our absence, Grandma panicked. She called my mom, who told her to call the police. She then called the police. Her grandson was missing. He must have got out through the open gate and walked off. She last checked on him a half hour ago. He was with the dog. Grandma set the phone down and opened the back door to the house. She searched the yard and scanned the tree line looking for a sign of the boy and his dog. She did not see them. The dispatch responded that an officer would respond immediately.

From the public works yard, Snuffy and I journeyed onward. We padded forward across an adjacent lot, an empty parcel covered with tall grass, and on toward the intersection of West 83^rd and Mission Road. In the distance, a rapid stream of passenger vehicles and delivery trucks hurried through the intersection. As we approached the intersection, traffic signals arose into the daylight like gigantic bean stalks. We trotted ahead toward an imminent confrontation with suburban commuters.

Suddenly and without warning, a Leawood Police Officer knelt before us and blocked our way. “Where are you going, little boy?” he said, and that open-ended question halted the day’s adventure. Instead of riding home in the back of the dog pound cage, Snuffy rode home with me in the back of a police car. The police officer transmitted us a quarter of a mile home. After administering to Grandma a fierce scolding, the police officer delivered us safely home.

As time passed, this would not be the last time Snuffy and I wandered away together under Grandma’s care. On another day, again during school hours, Snuffy and I sought out my brother and wandered away from the backyard to Corinth Elementary. A teacher let us in the front entrance. His fellow classmates laughed and cheered as we walked through the classroom door and found that, in his embarrassment, Kyle had buried his face in his hands and put his head down on his desk. This time an administrator called Grandma to come and pick us up herself.

For these childcare transgressions, personally, I do not blame Grandma. No, for this excursion, I blame my dog, Snuffy. My youth was founded on these adventures, and I owe it to Grandma for letting me learn to wander. That Grandma trusted Snuffy and respected me enough—even as a one-year-old, to let me play outside on my own, I will forever remember and love Grandma.