Captain Pike's Ship Log II

Going down the cellar stairs myself to exchange places with my young son, I'm assaulted both visually and in an olfactory sense. My old BB gun leans in the corner of the door jam, waiting, news clippings line the wall as I go downward: "young boy keeps unclaimed returned money", my mother had made such a fuss that I had turned in money I had found in the bathroom at the restaurant where we had dinner. I hated going to the bathroom in public places, specifically, going "number two". I had opened the stall door, and there was, unmistakable even at my young age: all rolled up with an elastic band, a wad of money. I had been overjoyed, just to be able to do something other than sit down on that toilet. There wasn't any, "good deed", about it -- I just brought it to my mother so she wouldn't ask me if I was able to go or not. We talked to the restaurant owner. He said he'd keep it in there in the restaurant, in case someone came back and asked about it. He had actually pinched my cheek and said what a good boy I was for returning this money. I probably would've argued it, had it not been for that look on my mother's face: I had made her proud, purely by accident, but why ruin a good thing? Later, riding home with the windshield wipers flapping and slapping back and forth, I was hypnotized in the backseat. The wipers looked like straining men, ever reaching and pulling back an endless rope. Reaching, and then leaning back pulling, over the arc made by the bottom of the wiper, relentlessly clearing the windshield of rain. Dad had said, "we will never hear about that money again". Somehow, it made my mother mad.