Is This Normal? (Part 1, of many)

Evil

We came to this country when I was three and a half. My dad spoke a bit of English, but in the house, we just spoke Chinese. When I started kindergarten, I knew about 20 words in English. (One of them was "automatic.") I learned the words from my sister, who was older than me and had been in American school for a year and a half.

On my first day of kindergarten, I didn't know how to play with any of the toys. Things like blocks, puzzles -- and especially playing house -- were foreign concepts. So I mostly kept to myself.

There was this one day when I got sick and I puked all over some other kid and he started to cry. The teacher sent me to the office, where they would call my mom to come pick me up. I couldn't communicate with the ladies in the office, so I reached into my shirt and pulled out an index card. My mom always made sure I wore that index card when I left for school. The card had a hole punched in a corner and a loop of red yarn through the hole and I wore it around my neck. The index card had my name, address, and home phone number, written by my dad.

I sat on what seemed like a very large, very old bench in the office and waited for my mom. I sat for what seemed like a very long time and when I realized that school was over and students were starting to go home, it crossed my mind that maybe my mom wasn't coming to get me. Various old ladies who worked in the office were saying stuff to me that I didn't understand.

They close the office 30 minutes after school lets out. In fact, they close the entire school building. Someone shooed me outside to wait on the front steps of the school. I looked around for my mom, with renewed hopes that maybe she just didn't figure out how to get inside and that she was waiting for me all along. But no.

It was a rainy afternoon, so not only was I sick, I was being rained on. And oh, I can't find my mom. Some neighborhood people walked past me but no one said anything. I guess the Don't Talk To Strangers rule also applies to pukey little kids.

I'm not sure what happened first, the fact that I gave up hope that my mom would appear from down the block, or that I just got too cold and shivery. I went up to a passer-by. He looked like a friendly old man. I pulled out the index card from inside my shirt and showed it to him.

If I remember correctly, the friendly old man brought me home. But I can honestly say I don't remember any of the rest -- why my mom didn't come to pick me up, what I said to her when I finally saw her -- I've lost all of those memories.

Is this normal?