The car stopped in front of pump six at the gas station. Mom didn’t get out. Instead, she turned to me with a serious look on her face.

“Amee, I need you to go in and give the man the money. I’ll stay here and pump the gas. You go inside and pay.”

I was terrified. A vision of catastrophes crashed into me and I started to shake. What if I lost the money? What if I got the wrong pump number and someone else got our gas. We wouldn’t have any way to get home. What if I was kidnapped? As a child in the early 1980’s, I knew the dangers of being kidnapped. The people on the news talked about kidnappings every night. Pictures of missing children graced the milk cartons at school. I used to study the pictures carefully so I could recognize a missing child when I saw them. A police officer visited my kindergarten class and told us not to go with strangers who offered us candy. At home, my Mom played a children’s audiotape about stranger danger. I knew all the songs on that tape and could sing Safety Kids louder than any of my brothers. And yet despite all that, I was now being asked to go talk to a real stranger who might kidnap me. I was scared! I had gone in the gas station store with Mom many times to pay before, but had never done it by myself. 

“What if I run into trolls?”

My question came out as a whisper. I was scared of being kidnapped but trolls were my biggest childhood fear. They lived in the alley behind our house. At night, I would imagine the devilish trolls talking to the king of the snakes and creating plans on how to lure children so they could eat them for dinner.

” There are no trolls at the gas station. You will be fine. You’re a big kid now and five year-olds need to run errands for their mother. This is your first errand.”

I tried to be brave as Mom told me what to say and how to act in the little gas station store. I wanted to help my mother and run an errand for her. In addition to the Safety Kids audiotape, we also listened to an audiotape about helping your mother. I could sing those songs louder than my brothers too.

My brother David, a year and half younger than me, piped up. “I want to go. I’ll punch the trolls in the nose.” 

Mom said David could come and then she spent the next minute having us practice what to say to the worker. Pump six. Five dollars. Unleaded. We said it over and over again, almost like a little song.

I held the five dollar bill in one hand and David’s hand with my other hand. We bravely crossed the parking lot. My memory is that we were dodging cars and trucks the entire way. That’s probably not true, but for a five-year old on her first errand it sure felt like the Daytona 500. After we got into the store, we waited in a long line. There was a woman with three crying children and a man smoking a pipe ahead of us. It was the 80’s. People smoked in public all the time.

The counter was almost taller than me. I had to stand on my toes to give the worker the money.

“Pump six. Five dollars. Unleaded,” I said.

“Can’t hear you,” the man barked.

“Pump six. Five dollars. Unleaded,” I yelled back, pushing the money as far as I could reach.

“Got it,” said the man. “Tell your Mom good job for making you run an errand.”

I don’t remember the walk back to the car but I do remember my Mom telling us we were big helpers.

I felt very grown up that day. I had done something for myself. It was my first errand.