The Yahara Journal 2020 edition

THE PLASTIC KEY Eyob Urban

Today marks his third month in the United States, and it was only getting worse for the six-year-old boy. He thought to himself, “What am I supposed to do?

When do I go back home?” His adopted family tried to help him understand that he has a new family that loved him desperately and wanted him to enjoy his new home. They presented to him an array of things to do, from reading mystery books, getting dirty in the sandbox, to watching his favorite television show, “Wishbone.”

They tried anything that would help him move forward. To the boy, nothing would be better than going back 7,584 miles across the world to his little house on a hot, unpaved, road. All he had were the memories that slowly slipped his brain, turning to distorted dreams. On a day that seemed to be another boring, agonizing day, the little boy woke up not knowing this day hid the secret to joy.

While the boy was roaming aimlessly around this palace-like home, he stumbled on his siblings playing with odd-looking toys. These toys were rod-like with grooves running along the sides of them with special tips that allowed for a connector to link multiple rods together. They came in sizes big, medium, small, and tiny and each in grey, blue, yellow, and white respectively. The connectors were strange objects to glance at, but were simple in functionality. Some looked like snowflakes; others looked like ladders.

The boy’s bored soul found something that reminded him of home. It reminded him of when he and his brother took their makeshift cars through the hot desert sand of Ethiopia or when they took a sword made of wires to the head of whoever was the antagonist. Except these toys weren’t made of recycled wires, they were made of hard, durable plastic. Oh, how he missed when he and his brother roamed around, not bound by an invisible fence that went around the perimeter of their green, suburban yard. They missed the freedom they had to run wild in unknown villages, forests with swamps, or the bustling city of Addis, Ababa.

But as for the boy, the discovery of K’nex replaced his longing to do something with a key to unlocking his imagination. With this new skill to imagine, he could roam free to new places and remain inside the parameters of his new home.

He no longer knew what boredom was. He would play for hours. Playing with these odd toys late into the night, sometimes two hours past his bedtime, until he would finally fall asleep at 10:00 p.m. after being exhausted from the best drum solo with 22