I, DRIVEN: MEMOIR OF A TEEN'S INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT (Prologue: "Caged")

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(February 19, 1969)

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I was driven to Cherokee.

A hazy memory of riding caged in the back of a police car. Two shadows in the front seat, the county sheriff and a female escort, jabbering. I, cargo, to be delivered from the Woodbury County courthouse to the Cherokee Mental Institution.

Outside, the Iowa landscape bleak: cloudy and cold, condensation and frost riming the windows, piles of dirty snow dotting the countryside.

Inside, hot and steamy.

Still, I shivered, my teeth chattering. Please turn up the heat!

But cargo has no voice.

For all the importance of this drive–then and now–I remember little, except for one question:

Am I really crazy?

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© 2008, by Jennifer Semple Siegel
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