Stranger in my Attic

With three pages of my draft finished, I decided to scrap it and start again. My topic was all over the place, beginning with trees, traveling to getting lost at age five, moving to teenage angst and ending up close to where I am now. It didn't flow and the more I wrote the messier it became.

I decided instead, to focus on running away. I called my dad and asked if he had ever run away from home. He giggled and said he had. He was sixteen when he got so mad at his dad for refusing to pay him for planting all the flax on the farm that he took off and went into town to pluck turkeys. He was gone for a week, returning only after threats of a police pick-up were made by his mother. It wasn't her idea, calling the police, but my grandpa had sat her down and told her exactly what to do. I imagine she was envious of my father who found a way and had the guts to get away from the drudgery of life on the farm.

Anyway, Dad and I talked about running away and the different ways people do it. My sister Chris used to run to the bathroom, staying there until she was good and ready to come out. Josh ran away when he was two, although he was just trying to get home from a night at grandma's house. Because the police picked him up however, he was classified as a runaway. My mother was frantic with worry.

Josh became the subject of my newly conceived draft. Josh at thirteen. Josh running away to New Hampshire with Irving Stigalt Baxter. I will always consider it a kidnapping, not a true running away story. That's how it happened from my perspective and that's how it will be told.

Perhaps this one will flow uncluttered from my head to the page and the class will read it without yawning or scratching their heads.

Time again for bed. Where does the day go?