A New Word

The words success and achievement were in my dictionary, but I didn’t know words like robbery, murder, and kidnapping even existed until one afternoon when I saw the breaking news.
“Three kidnappings, yes three kidnappings took place this afternoon,” the broadcaster announced.
“Kidnapping. What was kidnapping?” I thought to myself when I was setting near my dad, who was also watching the news. Only nine, I was unaware of its meaning. It made no sense to me. I understood the word “Kid,” but what did “napping” had to do with it?
The news was still on, but my dad wasn’t watching it anymore. He held his face in sadness. He got up from his chair and slowly walked towards the table. He reached for the phone and dialed some numbers.
While he was waiting for someone to pick up the phone on the other line, I turned my face toward the television and started watching the news again. Three different photographs of the victims, with their captions of names and ages, were displayed on a red screen. A boy who was six years old, a girl who was five, and another boy who was 11 and looked similar to a kid in our neighborhood.
“Yes, I heard. I’m very sorry about your loss. If there’s anything we could do for you, please don’t hesitate. We will inform you if we get any news of your son,” I heard my dad say as he put the phone back down on the table.
I turned and looked at the phone and then at him. He headed back to his chair, picked up the remote control, and turned off the television set. He ordered me to leave the room and finish up my school work. I did as he said and left the room.
Later that evening, I heard some loud sobbing noises coming from the living room. I stopped working on my homework and left my room in rush. I tiptoed my way to the living room and hid behind a curtain.
Through the curtain holes I saw my neighbors, a middle-aged couple that lived four houses down the street. They were sitting next to my parents on the couch. For the first few minutes, I saw my parents comforting them while they cried. I was relieved and thanked God that it wasn’t my parents who were crying. Convinced that everything was okay, I took a deep breath and decided to head back to my room. But I stopped moving when I heard the word “kidnapping” again. I felt goose bumps all over my body. The word sounded so cruel, harsh, and yet meaningless. I felt sick, but I couldn’t keep myself from hearing their conversation.
“Our son Jimmy, where is he?” Jimmy’s mom asked worriedly. Her husband, who sat under the tube light, comforted and assured her that everything will be alright. Then she stopped crying and the living room became silent.
I looked up and down again trying to squint my eyes again to see through the same curtain hole, but my eyes got tired and I decided to return to my room. While I was walking back, I thought about kidnapping and what Jimmy’s mom had said. I tried to connect the word with her conversation to find a definition of it.
“Jimmy was a kid, away from his home, and appeared on the television,” I thought to myself. Finally, I entered my room, sat on my chair, and kept thinking about the meaning of the word until I fell asleep on my books.
The next morning I woke up and went to the kitchen, where my mom stood quite near the stove. At first I was scared that she might yell at me for asking her about Jimmy, but my fear didn’t stop me from asking her. So I asked her what had happened with Jimmy. She looked at me in shock and then took a deep breath. With hesitation she told me that someone had taken him away from his parents without informing them.
Everything around me stopped and I felt cold even though I stood near a stove. From the breaking news to his parent’s conversation, everything started making sense to me. I added another word to my dictionary, a powerful albeit meaningless one.