The Runaway

Thirteen and a half ...
I was a seasoned, streetwise, runaway child.....

For a whole six months I traveled the entire coast of the U.S.....You slept when and where you could, begged food,clothes, shelter.....Sold your soul when begging didn't work....It gets to a point that you don't care anymore....... You don't think of yourself as being someone to care about........ You just try to survive....

You get cold... hungry.....Tired.....
Scared..........So lonely.....
but you survive.

I remember how I was finally caught.....I remember being so ticked off at the man who called the police on me....... And yet relieved.

I had been hitch-hiking along a desolate back road somewhere in northern Florida when a man came along and picked me up......He had his 2 young children in the car with him....Both sitting up in the front seat....So I climbed in the back seat. I remember these 2 little girls turning around looking at me and grinning, making little toddler faces at me.......And I wanted to cry because they were so lucky.
I don't know what kind of bullcocky story I was trying to feed this rather intelligent looking man about why a young girl my age would be out hitchhiking, but he obviously didn't buy it. We pulled into a service station/grocery where he said he had to get something for his girls....He brought us all out a soda and some crackers and while we ate ........ The police car snuck up on me..........

Damn I was ticked ......But relieved.