For years my mother alleged that this did not happen and that I was being fanciful.

 I could dispute the exact dates, I was young; my mother was pregnant with my sister I believe, my brother was consistently disabled. We were at the airport to pick up my father. 

My father traveled a great deal for work; however, it was rare that we had anything to do with the process, so this is a notable experience not only for meeting a celebrity but for being involved in my father’s daily life. He was rarely home in the 90s. It wasn’t unlike him to be away at conferences every weekend, and he generally worked from 7 am until 8 pm. He was more a ghost than a parent, present enough to be mentioned and called upon by the homeowners, but rarely engaged with. Sometimes a piece of furniture would be moved or food would be missing and we would assume he had been nearby.

So we are at the airport. Allow me to elaborate; I am a closeted fourth grader, for sake of the timing argument, and I go to Catholic school. That means mary janes, plaid jumper, and pigtails. Not even remotely joking about that. I am a ten year old picture of pedophilic groupthink. 

I am with my mother, who is a beached whale and miserable, and my brother who is consistently disabled. Every few months he has to go to a government office and prove that he is still has autism, OCD, ADHD, and is completely nonverbal. The government seems to think that it may be subject to change and wants him paraded out to indeed prove, once again, that he cannot communicate with the outside world. My mother goes everywhere with my brother like some sort of handcuff gag in a sitcom.

I am generally left to my own devices.

This was not different at the airport. In the 1990s you had these sort of freedoms in airports.

So, as I do, I wandered away from my parent and sibling; a frolicking, skipping, pigtailed Catholic child who bites their lip too much and asks questions in a squeaky voice that are age inappropriate.

Begging to be abducted.

Now, I have a (read: many) terrible habit(s). When I see something which excites me, I react. I might announce ‘Look at that guy’s beard, I’m gonna be his friend’ and then wander from the safety of my group. I once stopped talking, stricken, in front of my supervisor and a group of doctors to announce, ‘Your notebook is so shiny; I want to die.’

I wasn’t sure how to use punctuation there. Was the notebook so shiny that it made me want to kill myself? Were they unrelated thoughts? Did I forget I was in a room full of my fellow psychologists, pulled by the allure and thrall of this printed notebook?

I’m flighty. Which you don’t expect from Wednesday Addams. I am a grumbling, black clad thing that will suddenly erupt and yell ‘ooh! There’s flowers over there!’

(Begging to be abducted.)

I saw someone at the airport who caught my attention and I immediately sprinted to him. And I yelled, “I know you!”

And this willowy, demure, hermian man turned to me, imaginary pearls clutched because he has such wonderful body language, and he said, “You know who I am?”

And I said, “Yes.”

And he said, “Your parents let you watch my movies?”

And I said, “Yes.”

And he bowed, and put his hands on his knees, and grew close to me, and John Waters said, “You have terrible parents.”