This all happened long enough ago that I don’t recall my exact age, but I was in either first or second grade. My mom’s work schedule had changed recently, and because of that, she could now pick me up from school and take me to a playground right afterwards, one day a week. It was during one of these playground visits that I first met a child I’m going to call Bob.
I’d seen Bob sitting on a bench just watching the other kids playing, and I ran up to him to ask him to play. He agreed, and we had so much fun that I asked if he could have his parents bring him back to play next Friday. I don’t remember my next visit to the park, but Mom says that Bob ran up to us as soon as we arrived and said we took so long he thought we wouldn’t come.
So for a while, I saw and played with Bob every Friday after school, and I enjoyed it just as much as I did visiting all my other friends. I did find it a little odd and frustrating that Bob didn’t like to run around and chase each other as much as most of my friends, but there were plenty of other ways to play, so that was fine. And it was a little annoying how often Mom insisted on sitting and talking with us kids rather than just letting us play, but still, I really enjoyed my weekly playtime with Bob.
This is why I got so disappointed when one day Bob stopped showing up at the playground. The first day, I was disappointed but was willing to accept he might just be home sick or something, but when multiple Fridays went by, and I still didn’t see Bob, I could only assume Bob decided not to come because he didn’t like me anymore. Mom tried to argue that something might have come up, and Bob’s family just couldn’t bring him anymore, but I knew that couldn’t be the case because Bob told me he lived nearby and his mom let him come to the park whenever he wanted. I admitted my disappointment to my Mom, and she promised she would try to fix things, but I didn’t see how Mom could fix Bob not wanting to play anymore.
Then one day, right after dinner time, Dad answered a phone call, only to call me over and tell me Bob was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. I was shocked, I didn’t think Bob even knew our phone number, but also excited! We talked happily on the phone for some time after that. I asked why he didn’t come to the park anymore, and my understanding was that he had moved and was too far away to walk to the park like he used to. Of course, if that was the problem, Mom could fix it, so I told her I wanted to visit Bob again, and she should make it happen.
Eventually, we got our playdate on a weekend at a different park. I remember thinking Bob looked different than usual, but I was too happy to finally get to play again that I didn’t worry too much about that. I asked Bob if the man with him was his Dad, but Bob insisted he wasn’t and the man was just his babysitter. Bob had two babysitters now, a man and a woman, but one or the other would bring Bob to the playground for our play dates. Best of all, Bob was more willing to run around and chase each other now than he used to be!
It wasn’t until a while later that I finally understood what had happened.
While I didn’t pick up on any of the details as a kid who just wanted a playmate, my Mom had been more attentive. She had noticed Bob only seemed to have three sets of clothes that were always as dirty as Bob was. She had seen the signs of hunger that were the cause of Bob’s lethargy and unwillingness to run around. She had figured out that there was something wrong with the timeline in which we went straight to the park right after school, and yet Bob was always saying he waited a long time for us to show up, almost as if he didn’t have to wait to get out of school before coming to the park. And thankfully, she had done something about it.
Bob’s disappearance from our playground was because he had been placed in foster care due to his mother’s extensive neglect of him, a result of Mom reporting her concerns to the authorities. The two people I had thought of as Bob’s babysitters were in fact his new foster parents, who Mom had somehow hunted down so we could still meet up and play together. Bob would eventually be adopted into a home he was very happy in, and for years, Bob and I would have our regular play dates.
I was present when Bob finally learned Mom was the one who had gotten him placed in foster care, years after it had happened. It was so odd to see Bob, who usually acted as if nothing in the world fazed him at all, run up to hug my mom and thank her, sounding as if he was on the verge of crying. He would always thank my mom for getting him help every time we saw him after that.
I’m afraid Bob and I drifted apart a bit around high school. He was in a different school and a grade behind me – a result of his having to make up for all the time he spent out of school before being fostered – and it became too hard to keep up contact. Bob still always invited me to his birthday parties and always made it clear he was thankful to my mother and me for not ignoring him back when he was a lonely child who would walk to a playground just to be around happier kids.
Mom praised me for picking Bob as my playmate, as if I’d done something special that day. I still don’t think I did; I remember the day we met, and he was just the only kid not playing, and so was the easiest to approach. Still, I’m very glad I did ask him to play back then. It may have been nothing special for me, just a bored kid wanting a playmate, but even if by accident, it was the first step towards getting Bob the help he needed to change his life.
