On my last night in town, while the two of us waited for my mom to get back from the party and unlock the house, I took Sam for a walk around my old neighborhood. It had been many years since I dared to venture away from that house under cover of darkness and expose myself to the very real threat of petty crime. While we looked up at the cloudy sky, Sam asked me why I ran away from home. Just a few days before, I had made the mistake of referencing the time I ran away from home while Sam was in the car. He was no dummy, picking the perfect moment, the perfect setting to ask me the question. The overcast night sky seemed to muffle all sounds of traffic and strip away the murmurs of post-holiday mirth. I told Sam, “It wasn’t much of a run, for one thing. Not like, ‘Can’t catch me!’” “But why did you go?” he asked again. The truth was, I couldn’t remember what set me off that night. Maybe my mom wouldn’t let me have a thing, who knows. It was a confusing time to be a teenager in the years just after Kurt Cobain’s death. Not to place too much importance on that cultural event or anything; he was more of a haircut hero where I was from, in that the deepest cut from his death was ironically felt by the area barbers, a handful of regular customers lost to longer hair and flannel. But this was a time before boy bands began their meteoric rise. When dallying had yet to become an impeachable offense. Before teenagers could retreat into the internet to solve their problems, vent their frustrations. Some of us ran away. I can still picture myself kicking open the front door, taking those first angered and aimless steps. At the time I left, nobody seemed to notice or care. “Where did you go?” Sam wondered. “Just…around,” I non-answered. I ended up walking from near Mansion Park to a friends house in the Fairview area, what felt like ten miles but was somehow not even three. Sam asked me why I didn’t drive and I told him, “This was back when people just walked everywhere.” It was true. Even our moms hadn’t taken up jogging yet. I didn’t mention it to Sam, but it was empowering. I remember that much. That false sense of invincibility an area youth gains from traversing through the gauntlet of a once-booming but now downtrodden downtown. Remember, this was before they spruced up the economically-depressed area of town by adding those garish Willy Wonka street sign poles and absolutely nothing else. I decided to stop in the Cathedral, the one from all the postcards, on the way to my friend’s house, one sanctuary before another. I wasn’t looking for answers to my eternal teen angst; I just wanted to tell all my Baptist friends that I had gone inside, like an interfaith badass. Sam asked, as I took pictures of the sign on the corner of 29th Street and 4th Avenue, “Did you ever go back home?” “Oh yeah, of course I did. I was only gone for a couple days.” I stayed two nights at my friend’s house, including one school night. Long enough to make it awkward, experiencing life in someone else’s shoes, with their weird morning routines and responsibilities. Basically once I saw my name on their chore chart, I was like, “Hey, I wonder if I got any mail at home.” I had my friend’s parents drive me, but asked if they’d drop me off a few blocks from my house. Just in case my family happened to be on the front porch, worried sick, I wanted it to look like I had walked the “ten” miles back home. But I could see that the porch light was off when I got to my block. “Did you miss your family?” Sam asked me, just as we were approaching an opening between two houses, and before I answered him, I remembered something else about the night I returned from the wild. “Sam, right here. Right in this spot, back then when I was walking home, between these houses I saw my first shooting star.” I don’t think I’ve seen one since, but I’ll always remember seeing that one. They had recently torn down some trees between the houses, so their removal left a perfect stargazing spot, and quite a yard for football games, I might add. “Did you make a wish on it?” “No, not really.” It was quite a sight, that shooting star, but even then I didn’t take it as any sort of sign, like it was an astral beacon showing me the way home. It was headed in the other direction. “It’s cloudy tonight,” Sam said. “Can I wish on those red lights instead?” “The radio towers?” I asked. “Go for it.” “Antenna light, antenna bright. First, second, third-fourth-fifth-sixth antenna I see tonight. Oh wish I may, oh wish I might. Play my favorite song on the radio tonight.” He started with giggles, but doubled over into a full-on laugh by the end. We kept walking and Sam regained his composure to ask again if I came home because I missed my family. I said, “I guess. I probably missed my stuff more back then.” When I’m upset, I’ve always been easily soothed by stuff. “That’s the thing about running away,” I continued. “You don’t get to bring all your stuff. That’s why you need home.” The two of us had only been outside in the cold for a few minutes, only long enough to walk to the end of the block and not even all the way back, and my phone began to positively explode with activity. Ringing and buzzing, texts on top of voicemails on top of a missed call from my mom. The voicemail was from her and the text was from my brother Ryan. The text read, “Hey, where are you? Mom thinks you got kidnapped.” The phone started ringing, my mom again. I slipped it back into my pocket without answering. She didnt have to worry. I’d be home soon enough.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 16:00:51 +0000
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