Run, Run, Run Aways

When I was little, I had an evil stepmother. She was my nemesis. We fought often, with very few moments of amicability. There is one specific altercation that brings a smile to my lips, the outcome of which is clear in my mind, though I’ve forgotten the cause of the argument. 

I was about 8 years old. My childhood friend, the same one that talked me into skinny-dipping 10 or so years later, was visiting. She heard the fight between me and my stepmom from the safety of my bedroom. After the argument, I returned to my room fired up; I was ready to leave all of this bullshit behind. I told her I was going to run away from home. 

In the spirit of commiseration, she said she would come with me, so we devised a plan. We would gather everything I owned with any value. Well, anything either of us thought had value. We would then sell these things to make money to survive on the road. After some additional discussion, we put our plan into action. 

We took my old birthday cards and ripped off the parts where people had written on them. These had to be valuable. Why else had I saved them? We gathered any toys that might bring in a buck or two along with knick knacks I had acquired throughout my short life. 

The big seller was my glass snow globe. It had a wooden base with a colorful ceramic duck glued to it. There was a glass dome that surrounded the duck and held some kind of liquid (water, maybe) along with small white balls.  In the nature of a snow globe, when you shook it, “snow”, the small white balls, fell on the duck and on the wooden base around it. It was one of my treasures from the Liquidator store in a nearby town. That duck was, without a doubt, my ticket out of there. 

Soon there was a large pile of items in the middle of my bedroom floor. My friend and I carried it all outside and filled my rusty red Radio Flyer wagon to overflowing. With the wagon all packed, we started out on our adventure to freedom. 

***

Now, I lived in a very rural area on a country highway. The closest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away and there wasn’t much traffic then. After pulling my overflowing wagon to the end of the U-shaped driveway, my friend and I turned onto the highway and headed south. My friend walked behind the wagon to make sure nothing fell out. It was our only insurance plan.

I knew there were a bunch of houses on a nearby side road, so we headed that way. The plan was to knock on doors and sell things in a sort of mobile rummage sale. After pulling the wagon about a half-mile, I reached the road, my friend still keeping watch over our treasure.  

The road was mainly made up of summer homes and cottages. It was summer, so many of the houses were occupied. The first house was a ranch style and it looked like there were people home. Ready for a first sale, I pulled the wagon toward the driveway.

As I pulled the wagon into the driveway, I hit a bump and jostled the wagon to and fro. I turned quickly to make sure all of the treasure was still in the wagon. As I turned, out of the corner of my eye I saw the duck inside the glass snow globe rise up into the air. My friend was reaching for it and soon I was too. The snow globe floated for what seemed like hours. 

Though both my friend and I reached for the globe, neither of us got to it in time. In slow motion, it hit the blacktop driveway, glass dome first. Time sped up as the glass dome shattered into a thousand pieces. The water and small white balls that had occupied the dome flew in every direction. I couldn’t believe what just happened. In a split second, everything changed.

As the shock of this loss sunk in, I dropped to the ground and began crying as though the world were ending. My ticket out of hell had just smashed to pieces. 

My friend, in an attempt to cheer me up, picked up the remaining wooden base with the duck still attached and suggested we could still sell it as is. If we cleared out the remaining glass, it would be a nice duck statue on a wooden base. Someone would buy it. But I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. I was devastated. My dreams were crushed under the weight of that broken glass. It was over. The freedom I felt for that short period of time was gone.  I slowly turned the wagon around and began pulling it home, my head down and tear stains on my cheeks. 

Today: Now, I think, too bad EBay wasn’t around then! I could have sold all my junk online! lol