When I was small, I ran away a lot. This lasted until my early teenage years, by which time my mother had gone through various grades of hell. The run away and easily found hell, the run away and out for a couple of hours hell and the run away and called the police hell.
I would run away whenever I lost an argument, or fell out with my mother or brother, or just because. I hid in hedges and holes. I ran streets away or stayed in the garden. Once, I ran up the road and sat on a bench wanting desperately to be found. Except there's no bench where I remember there being one. Once I ran away and hid under the swing on the back lawn (it's shady - many trees). Once I ran away and my mother was summoned home from the hairdressers, her hair undressed, to find me.
The most memorable of my idiocies was after my mother remarried. We went on the first of three family trips to Canada. These trips were mostly excellent, as they involved driving across the whole country in a camper van, eating lots of Dairy Queen icecream and riding skidoos and things. In Saskatchewan, we stayed with my mother's childhood friends, who took us bowling. I hate bowling. I think I hate bowling because my new stepsister always beat me. Once when I had once again come last, I ran away again. In the middle of Saskatoon. I ended up sitting on a pile of gravel by the side of the road. My parents called the police. My mother said, “All I could think was that you'd look the wrong way when you crossed the road.”
I survived. And I have carefully avoided bowling ever since, except on Saturday night, when I was visiting my friend Liz, who lives near Yeovil with her husband, a dashing helicopter pilot, and their three dashing children. The three dashing children mean Liz and Al do not get out much, so bowling was a big deal. I grinned and bore it. I came last. For three rounds, I didn't get any points. It was girls against boys - or, in my language, women against men - and the girlwomen lost. At the end, Al came up and said, “I admire the fact that you didn't use the bumpers.” Me, I admire the fact that I stayed put. Not least because if any town deserves running away from, it's Yeovil.
I still run away but now I do it with planes.