I did, when I was 14. I was walking down the street one evening and saw my mother staggering up the street, dead drunk and calling my name. I broke, hitchhiked to Las Vegas, totally intent on San Francisco and Haight-Ashbury (it was 1967). Got picked up the cops, never made it to San Francisco, which is a blessing because I’d probably still be there living with Timothy Leary till he died.

This is an excerpt my sister wrote in her memoirs about one time she ran away. She was nine and we were living in a small dirt town in Nevada. She ran away to the dirt mountain that was filled with old mine shafts. She tells it like this:

….”my friend, Roy and I planned to run away and live in the empty water tower on T mountain. I brought a bag of macaroni and stole a pan from Grandma’s kitchen. Roy brought matches. We were going to live in the water tower until we were 18. We couldn’t light a fire, though, and we didn’t have water, and we got scared and went home. ”

Kids run away when they’re very young out of anger at their parents, mostly. Did you ever run away? Why? What happened?