Running away

[fbhjr]

The first time I ran away from home I was 4 years old.
I had wanted someone to play with me and everyone was too busy.
So, I ran away.  The intention was they would miss me and be sorry.  They’d
come and get me and give me the attention I wanted.
(Yeah, that is how I thought at 4.  Remember, I was building ladders to get
on top of refrigerators and steal the class snack too…)

We lived on a dead end street.  I got as far as the end of it and stopped.
I wasn’t allowed to cross the street.  That was a well known rule.
If I went to the left, I’d come to Barry’s house.  He always picked on me.
I didn’t know anything that lay on the right side at that time.
So, I sat down by the neighbor’s garbage cans and waited.

It did not occur to me that I regularly took off to play in the woods
behind our house for hours at a time.
So, when I went home less than an hour later expecting to have been missed,
I found that no one had even noticed I had run away.
That was pretty bad.

There is still a part of me that, when things are bad, says “maybe you
should run off.  They’ll miss you and come after you.  Then, they’ll show
you they care and bring you home.”
But, the part of me that is 43 years older then that boy who ran away
remembers what happened that very first time and says “or, they won’t even
notice.”