I woke up early to the door-knocking sound my cell phone makes when I receive a text. Sometimes my carpool people will text me first thing in the morning, but this message had a much more sinister tone. The anonymous text read: "Good morning. Someone at your location is spying on your cell phone." What?! (cue Mission Impossible theme) As I was getting ready to throw my phone through the window and make a run for it, my sleepy brain woke up enough to suggest to me that: 1) this was probably just a spam text and 2) nobody cares what I do. There aren't any messages from Al Qaeda on my phone, and I don't store the secret plans to the Death Star on there either, so in all likelihood no one cares about spying on it. It's probably just the deposed king of Nigeria trying to get me to part with my money again. He can be persistent like that.
So, along that theme, I thought I'd write about the time in second grade when I ran away from home and thought the army came looking for me. OK, I guess that doesn't really tie in at all, but it's my blog and I'll do whatever I feel like.
One day after school, I had an argument with my parents about having to clean my room or do my homework or something completely unreasonable like that. They wouldn't let me watch TV until I had done what they told me to do, but I really wanted to watch Transformers (my favorite cartoon) first before I did whatever tedious task they wanted. My parents didn't budge and instead changed the channel to watch something else. That made me mad. I stomped off to my room to sit and feel sorry for myself and to reflect on what horrible parents they were.
My backpack was still sitting on the floor where I left it when I came home and my boots and plastic airsoft rifle sat nearby. That's when it hit me: I should run away. In that moment, I knew that I was wise beyond my years and only by running away could I really teach them a lesson. I snuck into the kitchen, made a couple sandwiches, filled a thermos with water, and peeked into the living room to see if they noticed. They hadn't looked away from the TV, so I was in the clear.
Back in my room, I gathered up a blanket, a flashlight, and a Captain Crunch Mount Crunchmore map (?!). I stuffed it all into the backpack and gathered up the rifle and boots. It was September, but I knew that after hiking for a day or two I would eventually reach some sort of mountains and it would be cold there. There's always snow on top of mountains.
I quietly exited through the back door and stood on the porch. The sun was low in the sky and in a couple hours it would be dark, so I had to hurry. As I walked away from the house, I expected to hear the door fly open and my mom yell at me, but by the time I reached the end of the yard, I figured I had a chance to get away without notice. The further I got from the house, the faster I walked until I realized that they weren't going to come after me. They were probably still sitting there watching TV, like the terrible parents they were.
My map wasn't as useful as I had expected it to be, but after half running, half walking for a long time, I guessed that I was almost to Alaska or Colorado and should be seeing the mountains any minute.
The mountains turned out to be a little further away than I thought they'd be, so I decided to find a tree to camp under for the night. It occurred to me that I didn't have a tent, a pillow, or a sleeping bag, but I didn't care.
I wondered if mom and dad were panicking yet. They had probably been calling for me and maybe they were looking around the yard for me. Maybe they had started driving around the neighborhood trying to find me. I didn't know how much time had gone by, but it was probably getting late. Maybe they had given up looking and called the police. Were the police looking for me? I kept an eye out as traffic rushed by. I didn't know how I felt about the police looking for me and I would probably hide if I saw them coming.
The sun was setting, my feet hurt, and I was sweating from running so much, so I sat down and rested. A helicopter flew over and I watched as a soldier wearing camouflage sat in an open side door looking down at everyone. It disappeared over the rooftops, then turned and came back. The helicopter was dark green and the word ARMY was painted on the tail. Wait... had the police given up looking for me and now they called in the army? Had the helicopter crew spotted me? Maybe there were tanks on the ground rumbling towards me right now. I was in serious trouble. I had underestimated how upset my parents would be about me running away.
The best thing to do would be to run all the way back home and hope that the police and the army wouldn't find me first. I ran the whole way and almost collapsed when I finally reached the back porch. The car was there, so they must have returned from searching for me. I opened the back door and expected my parents to be right there with a look of surprise on their faces when I walked in. They weren't by the back door, so I stepped inside anticipating their excited reactions when they saw me. No sign of the parents. I walked into the living room. They were still watching TV.
