RUNNING AWAY

While I was living in my sanctuary, my basement bedroom, my childhood best friend lived right next door. Her younger sister and my younger brother were about the same age and the four of us hung around quite a bit. She had two older brothers and Randy and I had one older brother and one younger brother, we were the middle kids and we decided we were being mistreated and was going to run away. Nettie and Irene wanted to go with us.

Now in between the little town we lived in and the next bigger town just south of us (about twenty miles I think) there were these cliffs with caves in them on either side of this stretch of road. We had a beautiful Samoyed Husky and Nettie and Irene had this HUGE wagon with tall sides. The plan was to have Bear pull the wagon with our stuff, including bedding and food, to the caves and we would live there. Well, I had a small suitcase to pack my clothes in but Randy didn't, so we started packing his clothes in small boxes and stored them on the wooden shelves in my bedroom. These were like shirt boxes and stuff like that so there were a lot of boxes with one or two pieces of clothing in each.

One day, I'm sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast with the family when my dad says to my older brother, "When you're finished eating, I want you to go downstairs and get those boxes that are on the shelves and take them out to the burn barrel and burn them." Randy and I looked at each other in horror and then Randy said, "I'll do it, let me do it Dad." "Ok," he replies, "but no playing around. If it's not done within the hour, you'll be grounded and I'll do it myself." "I'll help since they're in my room" I said and asked to be excused from the table.

You never saw two kids hustle so fast in their lives. We were dumping boxes on the bed and running them out to the burn barrel as fast as we could, then we had to sneak Randy's clothes back to his room. Boy did we think we had pulled one over on my dad and saved the day. Looking back and knowing my dad, he KNEW those boxes contained Randy's things and that we would panic to "save" his belongings. So much for our plans to run away. I laugh to myself when I remember that. My dad was quite the wily little fox.