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Some Kids I Have Known
Kent


As the saying goes, "They threw away the mold after they made Kent." Reason being was that there just wasn't another kid like him. His mother fled from California because he had been kicked out of everyday care in the area where she lived. She was at her wit's end.

"Auntie," she cried on the telephone as she spoke. "I just don't know what to do." "I can't work." "No one will watch Kent."

"Come on home." Starlene's aunt advised from Oklahoma. "We will find a way." Little did she know the shock it would throw upon the quiet hard-working family.

Kent had such endearing looks, and it was hard to believe he was such a terror. He had inherited the characteristics from not two but three strong races. There were his Norwegian blood, Irish blood and not apparent but very much there, Native American blood.

"I think he got the top layer of all three genetic structures." His aunt was observing as the little totally fair skinned, with hair of blond, and a five-year-old walked into her house.

As it turned out the maximum responsibility fell into the hands of their eighty-eight-year-old Mother, Kent's great-grandmother, who was full Native American. She was the only one who was a match for the precocious little boy. It was her call late in the evening to make them look at each other shaking their heads as they listened on the speaker phone.

"We are just back from ER." The grandmother in her matter of fact way told them.

"What happened?"

"Kent had to have his head sewed back together." The grandmother could have been given a medal for her matter of fact way she related the story.

"I'm telling you." "You just can't believe what this child does." "His poor mother is out of her mind. I think she is in deep depression." "All she does is hug him, love him, or stare off in space."

"What brought about the accident?" The elderly woman's daughter wanted to know.

As the Native American grandmother told her story in the customary way of the old folks, going in a circle while telling every little detail, her daughter could see the happenings.

"Starlene came in from work as usual." "She said they had a very busy day at the clinic and she was anxious to get out of her nurse's uniform." "As she changed, she was getting dinner on the stove and trying to get the children in the bath tub." "We have that intercom thing on so she can hear me or I can hear her from my apartment." "I could hear her in there working around."

A break in the story telling must be made so as to acknowledge the older woman's quick decision making as to having rented a duplex in town where she could move her granddaughter from California next door to her. Having made acquaintance over the years with people who were property owners gave her the opportunity to find an ideal location.

"There is always noisy slam banging going on over there, but I don't let it bother me." "I know it is Kent flopping around like a fish in water."

Her daughter had to smile with her mother's comparison of the little boy in his masculine strength, controlling his environment as easily as a fish "flops around in water."

"All at once I heard this awful slamming, banging sound." "Kent was screaming at the top of his five-year-old lungs." "I knew something bad had happened." "Starlene yelled," "Gramma!" Gramma!" "Come quick." "Kent has fallen."

"I rushed out the front door and over to her place." "I was so scarred." "I didn't know what I would see when I got there." The gramma was matter of fact.

"What happened?!" "What happened?!"

The mother was in tears. "Kent gashed his head!"

Sure enough there was blood flowing in the extreme as it will only do from a laceration to the area around the head and face. "There was blood running down his face as he screamed."

"Quick!" "Into the car!" "No time to call 911." They were off with the eighty-eight-year-old woman holding the wheel steady as only she could in her years of non ticketed driving. "Hold that towel tight on his head." "Try to slow the bleeding." She advised her granddaughter who was the nurse.

The hospital was really not much more than a mile away with a clear straight thoroughfare, so it was no challenge to get there. The elderly woman had been through many events such as this as she had worked in the health field not directly with patients, but as a liaison in health related fields as to public relations and, of course, with her own family, immediate or extended.

"You know, the hardest part of the whole thing for me, was having to explain to the doctor that Kent fell off the top of a door, which he had been riding like a horse!" The disgust at the child's erratic behavior was finally showing through to the woman who felt she now had seen everything.

"Off the top of a door?" Her daughter was seeing the five-year-old perched atop a door in her mind.

"Off the top of a door." The older woman made no further comment.

None was needed.


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