I ran away once. Or at least I attempted to run away.
If you take yourself back to being five, six, seven, maybe eight years old, you probably remember that feeling. The dramatic certainty that you were done with this house. I was at the ripe old age of five when I felt it. Very Macaulay Culkin. Very Home Alone. Except I never wished my family would disappear, I just had one of those childhood moments that went too far.
The whole thing started with GI Joe.
My mom and I were in a serious debate about whether I should be allowed to watch it. I wanted to watch it badly. All my friends had the lunchboxes, the action figures, the whole thing. But my mom drew the line. She said I wasn’t watching a show that used guns and modern warfare.
I pushed back with the strongest argument I had.
“It’s almost 1990,” I said. “Everyone watches it.”
Her answer was simple.
“You’re not everybody else.”
I didn’t understand the logic. She let me watch He-Man. Prince Adam turns into a guy with a giant sword and fights Skeletor. That felt like violence to me. But she broke it down. He-Man might use a sword, but it wasn’t modern warfare. It wasn’t guns. It wasn’t the same thing.
Looking back, she was making a pretty good argument.
But I was still mad.
At some point, internally at least, I made my decision. If that was how things were going to be, then she would not be seeing me around anymore. I was out of there. She would miss me. She would rue the day she didn’t let me watch GI Joe.
I was fully committed emotionally.
The problem was, I had no plan…
I had a bike. That was it.
So when my mom wasn’t looking, I snuck into the fridge and grabbed an apple. Then I found those orange peanut butter cheese crackers that do not taste like cheese but are somehow incredible. I put them into a bandana like I had seen on TV, found a stick in the backyard, tied it all together, grabbed a juice box, and slung the whole thing over my shoulder.
Then I hopped on my bike, one hand steering, the other holding my little makeshift bindle, and rolled down the driveway. I looked back once at the house and prepared to enter the unknown.
Now, if you were there, you may have seen a safe suburban neighborhood in Medina, Ohio.
I saw a jungle.
I mean where would I eat? Who would make grilled cheese the way my mom did? Where would I sleep? What about my books? What about the stuffed animals I still secretly played with?
Did I even have money?
Was I supposed to get a job at five?
I stood at the end of the driveway staring into the big world, and my courage evaporated. Then I looked back at the house and saw my mom standing in the window.
I felt embarrassed. Sad. Defeated.
But I couldn’t show her that.
So I marched the bike back into the garage, threw the bandana sack on the ground, walked inside, and headed straight up the stairs.
My mom said, “Hey, Aaron.”
I didn’t answer. I was performing heartbreak.
She said again, “Aaron.”
“Yes, Mom?”
“I’m glad you’re home.”
I didn’t smile on my face, but I smiled in my heart.
“Me too.”
And the thing I’m most grateful for now is this: when I couldn’t run away, my mom kept the door open.
When I ran away, she let me come home.
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