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Word Search Jeffrey N. Johnson (bio) Mitchell McGuire, age five, didn't yet have the word to describe where his mother had abandoned him, though with a full vocabulary he might have chosen asylum. Children his own age rampaged about the room, unleashed and unattended, ignoring the adult sanctioned activities as they pelted each other with worn buds of Crayola, toppled Dixie cups of warm apple juice, and generally pushed each other around. His sense of security, usually cushioned by the sound of bird song and bellowing cow, was laid waste by the relentless pitch of the screaming. Mitch couldn't count yet, but the numbers were terrifying. He had encountered a flock of Canadian geese and a herd of deer of similar quantities, but never a pack of children. The few kids who weren't intent on violence were drawing stick-figure parents and houses with tilted chimneys, but Mitchell just sat there before the blinding white sheet of paper, turning a magenta crayon between his fingers. The idea of making art at a time like this was absurd. His greatest fear was that this was his new reality. From this day forward he would be surrounded by this shrieking, untamed, and unwieldy band of little shits. The concern was valid and perhaps a necessary, if unkind benefit, as this sudden abandonment forever shattered his illusion that he was the only child in the world. Though he had surely observed another kid or two from his perch in the grocery store shopping cart, dutifully pushed every Saturday morning by his chain-smoking father, the concept of peers had never occurred to him. There were no kids in his neighborhood because there was no measurable neighborhood. He was raised on so much land that neighbors visited only by car. Children featured on television were either props or a professional class of small humans trotted out for such productions. They could have been aliens, for all Mitchell knew. He had never met a contemporary, so there was no actual proof they existed. He was an only child in a brood of five, the youngest by seven years. On his birth, his much older brothers and sisters shared an initial curiosity that devolved into disinterest and eventually resentment, as a new baby was an obvious drain on resources and attention, especially to the ones entering their teen years. By the time Mitchell found himself abandoned in a large room full of screaming kids, his eldest sister was a junior in college and his closest brother was beginning End Page 83 middle school. The generational cleft and uninhabited horizons left him little by which to measure his place in the world. Mitchell had always been spoken to directly, never as part of a group, so when a high-chinned heron-like lady, repeatedly referred to as 'Principal,' chirped for all the students, whoever they were, to quiet down and take their seats, he knew she wasn't talking to him. He spent the time scanning the faces of these newly discovered contemporaries, seated and quiet now, subdued into a gloom quite opposite the unbridled commotion of only moments before. He was heartened by the few who had earlier stayed in their seats and practiced their art, as likely commanded by their stricter parents, and decided to remember their faces in case there was a need to form alliances. The Principal droned on in her high warbling voice for what seemed like a week and closed her speech by remarking about how much she was looking forward to seeing them next week for the first day of school. This was the only part Mitchell heard, and on this point she seemed to be speaking directly to him. With great urgency, bordering on panic, he whipped his head around and spotted his mother against the back wall, chatting with a woman half her age. She had not abandoned him after all. He had never seen her look so happy. In the car on the way home, he asked his mother what that was all about. "I already told you, you're starting kindergarten. You're going to school. All little boys and girls go to...