When I was 14, I was fed up with my parents in a big way. I’d been grounded for like the third consecutive month, and had been thinking of running away from home for like 6 months. I learned the code to their ATM card by watching them enter it, so one night I packed up a duffel bag and ran away on a really cold winter night. I ran to an ATM a couple blocks away and took the daily max (about $350). I walked to a motel a few miles away and got a room for the night.
The next morning I called one of my buddies from the motel, since he’d said to call him if I ever ran away. He told me my parents had called him and all my friends, the cops were looking for me around town and at bus stations, and the principal of my high school grade was walking around the mall looking for me. Turned out another friend of mine rolled over on me and told my parents and the police every last bit of what my full plan was. I was feeling trapped and called my parents, thinking I’d negotiate some way where they’d call off the search. My dad convinced me to come home and things would be better. So I begrudgingly did, since I felt my plan wasn’t really going to work too well since everyone knew the gist of it.
Here’s the dumb part: my plan was to go to the mall to buy a Crocodile Dundee-style knife and holster, then take a bus to visit a buddy of mine in a small town about 60 miles south of there. I figured I could stay with him for a few days (little did I know my parents had already spoken with his parents since I’d left). Then I was going to go to Chicago and mug people for a living. I’m serious. That was my plan. I thought as a 14 year old skinny white kid with no friends, I was going to survive as a mugger on the streets of Chicago, mugging people in alleys and stuff with a large knife.
Imagine what would have happened to me if I’d have gotten that far. Jesus.