Stranger in a Stranger Land

By Laurel Hanson

The summer I first traveled to America, my father wore a red shirt so I could spot him in the crowds. Let’s just say that system doesn’t work if other people are wearing red shirts and you’re a five-year-old who can’t see above anyone’s butt.

As soon as we joined the mob in front of JFK to catch a cab, I got separated from Dad. Naturally, I grabbed the first blob of crimson I saw. The hand felt unusually squishy, but I didn’t think much of it. It was hot for June, and my feet felt the same kind of squishy inside my new sneakers.

I realized my error when I caught sight of us in the glass doors. The person on the other end of the hand was super tall, with a Yankees cap perched on a pointy head. When he looked down at me, the flat silver of his eyes was not the warm chocolate of my dad’s. He blinked, and the lids went sideways like sliding doors instead of up and down like window blinds.

It didn’t upset me that the hand I clutched wasn’t attached to a human being. After all, Mom had told me America is a strange country and I should expect to find things very different from Turkey. She wasn’t kidding. What did upset me was that the hand I clutched wasn’t attached to my dad.

I opened my mouth to shout for him, and the tall guy’s eyelids fluttered sideways really fast. Then everything around me flickered, and though I was still gripping the squishy hand, suddenly I was in a foamy tube that looked like the inside of a giant pool noodle. Not-my-dad let out a high, thin whistle like a broken flute. Immediately, red lights started flashing, and little mouths came out of the pool noodle walls to squirt us with tingly liquid. My mom and I had been through the car wash in Istanbul, which is pretty much what the whole situation was like, except we didn’t have to pay.

Immediately, Not-my-dad went full dervish, spinning around in what I assumed was a panic. Then I noticed his red shirt said “I Heart NY.” Dad had told me that’s what tourists wear, so the mystery was solved: I’d been kidnapped by tourists.

Another tourist came racing down the pool noodle. This one was a lot smaller and not wearing a souvenir shirt. He fluted his voice at me like he thought I was the one responsible for whatever was going on, sounding a little like my dad when he’s upset. Weirdly, I felt like I knew what he was saying.

He was asking why I’d tried to steal his kid.

Well, that had to be backward, though Not-my-dad was sure acting like a kid. He seemed to be throwing a tantrum. Oily bubbles were coming out of his ears, and he blew them on his shirt with loud honks.

I began to suspect I was not in America. It’s a strange country, sure, but this was ridiculous.

I needed to get out of there, so I asked the small one if he could speak English.

Turns out, he could, but it was weirdly flat sounding, like if stones could talk. “I don’t know who you are,” he said. “I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money.”

I had twenty dollars in my shoe Dad had told me to save for emergencies. This qualified as an emergency, so I pulled the sweaty bill out of my sneaker and offered it to him.

He waved a thin, six-fingered hand in front of his nose and said, “I have more money than God.” This time, he sounded like a woman with an attitude.

If money wasn’t going to work, I wasn’t sure what to offer him to release me. So I just said, “I want to go home.”

He pointed to a circle in the wall that opened the same way his eyelids did. Outside was nothing but night sky and one big blue ball. I may have grabbed the wrong dad—well, kid apparently—but I wasn’t an idiot. I knew I was looking at Earth. My chest got all tight, and I couldn’t breathe right.

Then the small one spoke, this time like a young girl but with music. “There’s no place like home.”

That’s when I realized he was just reciting movie lines at me! Dad and I did that a lot, mostly from The Princess Bride because we’ve seen it a million times. Whenever Mom said, “I mean it,” we’d shout, “Anybody want a peanut?” which is my favorite quote. Then we’d laugh and laugh. The thought of my dad pinched my heart so bad I flopped down on the foam and cried.

The small one reached out to tap my shoulder. “I smell children,” he said in an old woman’s voice, “but I don’t see children.” I knew what he meant. He’d thought I was a grown up, a stranger danger to his kid who was still blowing his ears on his shirt.

Next thing I knew, the small one pointed and whistle-shouted at Not-my-dad, just like my dad does to me when I’ve done a bad thing. Mostly, it sounded like flutes arguing, one angry and the other whining “It wasn’t my fault!” Then Not-my-dad grabbed my hand and blinked rapidly. This time I saw his thin fingers adjusting levers on a device hooked to his belt.

In a flicker, we were back at the JFK terminal where Dad was shouting my name like he was on his last nerve. Not-my-dad winked out of existence as my actual dad raced up, his face redder than his shirt. Wheezing, he asked who’d been holding my hand.

So I told him. “Another tourist who got separated from his dad.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laurel Hanson is a writer currently living in Maine who believes in the possibilities of life, no matter how improbable. She hoped to honor fathers everywhere with this (partially) true memory from her childhood. Her father always wore red shirts when they traveled and more than one hand was grabbed that was definitely the wrong one.

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