I can’t remember what it was that made me think of one of these stories, but then while I was thinking about I remembered… hey I kinda got left somewhere by myself for a long amount of time probably around the same timeframe. And stuff like this doesn’t happen anymore without somebody calling the cops or CPS but back then it wasn’t weird. Just… annoying to everybody involved. LOL.
So, story #1.
I’m going to say this was probably 1993 or 1994. It was before we moved out to the country (which would have been Thanksgiving 1995), so we were still living in the city but I was going to a school out in the country.
To set this up I have to tell you the way school transport worked for me — My uncle taught at my school, and my cousins went there, too, so since they also lived in the city and had to be drive to school every day, my parents would just drop me off at their house every morning and I’d ride with them. Then my uncle would drop me off at my house in the afternoon. But some days, that just didn’t work out – like my cousins being on vacation, or just not at school that day for whatever reason. Well one afternoon, my uncle had to be somewhere and checked my cousins out and they left early. Don’t remember the circumstances. Either way, I did not have a ride home, and when that happened, I would ride the bus.
I hated riding the bus because the bus driver would yell a lot and it was loud and the seats were uncomfortable but thankfully I didn’t have to do it often. And the way the bus worked for my tiny, rural private school, was that the bus simply dropped all the kids off at one point for parents to come pick up. No driving to multiple bus stops or individual homes. One stop. So you’d get on the bus at school, the bus would drive the 20-25 minutes to the city, and stop at a grocery store (Seesel’s) just inside the city limit. The bus would drop all the kids off there and typically the parents would be waiting in the parking lot, or would show up not long after.
So that day I rode the bus to Seesel’s, got out with all the other kids, and didn’t see my mom or dad anywhere. So I just sat down in front of the grocery store to wait because I figured they’d be along any minute. I know my uncle had told them he was leaving early that day and I’d be riding the bus, it wasn’t like they didn’t know I was there. So I sat and waited.
I remember it was chilly out, but not too bad and I had a book, so I just sat with my back against the wall, under the over-hang of the store, and read for a while. Eventually all the other kids were picked up. I was starting to get bored and annoyed. I wandered into the store for a bit, then back out. I was a kid and it was the early 90s, I had no money. I usually carried a dime for the pay phone at school just in case but the pay phone at the grocery store was a quarter. So I couldn’t call home to see if they were there, or call my grandparents. Not that it would make much of a difference, because if they weren’t home, all I could do was leave a message. Nobody had cell phones.
So I sat back outside, finished my book. The sun started to set.
Finally mom showed up. I’m going to say I sat outside that grocery store, alone, for a good 3 hours. And for the life of me I can’t remember why she was so late – she had an after-school program or conference or something?? I also can’t remember mom’s reaction or my reaction! (But I can remember I had a dime but the phone only took quarters.) And I asked her recently and she doesn’t remember this incident at all. But I was like, oh, I definitely remember sitting outside the Seesel’s for hours on end bored to death waiting on somebody to come get me…
Story #2.
So this was summer of 1994 for sure because I was taking my driver’s ed course. I was not 15 yet but because of where my birthday falls, this was the year I had to take it. My school didn’t offer driver’s ed, so I had to take it as a summer class at a local high school. Which I hated. But whatever. It wasn’t a long class, and I ended up passing with flying colours, and I got my certificate I could give to the DMV that let me get my license without taking the driver’s test.
So the last day of class, all we were doing was getting our final grades and our certificates. There was no actual class. But nobody knew that. Like the previous class where we took the exam, the teachers didn’t say, hey, FYI, next class you’re only going to be here 15 minutes tops. Instead of 4 hours or whatever it normally was. And it wasn’t like any of us were driving on our own yet, we all had to be dropped off by somebody so it would’ve been nice to have been able to tell my mom – hey, just wait on me to be done ok?
But instead I got dropped off, got my certificate, and then, we were done. I went outside and of course mom was gone. She and Ash’s mom were going to run errands. So I couldn’t call and be like hey come back and get me. I got in line for the pay phone – almost EVERYBODY was trying to get somebody to come back and get them (except the handful who lived nearby and walked or rode a bike back home) – tried to call home, just got the message machine of course. Tried to call my grandma who lived nearby, no luck. I was out of change at that point, so I joined the group of kids just waiting and watching for a ride.
It was the middle of summer and it was miserably hot outside. And this high school had NO shade what-so-ever outside, it was all just concrete and brick, no trees, no grass. So nobody wanted to sit outside in the 100 degree heat. The group of kids still waiting ended up going back inside into the school’s library, which faced the parking lot with big windows so it was easy to sit and watch. I’d say at this point about 20 kids were left, and we all just quietly sat down in the library near the windows. Nobody was messing with anything. Nobody was even really talking because we were all from different schools and nobody knew each other. We all just sat and waited.
A few kids left, picked up… probably about 10 or so of us were left when a man came into the library. I dunno if he was a school official or the janitor or what he was, but he asked us what were doing in there. Somebody told him we’d gotten out of the driver’s class and were waiting on pick-ups. The man then very rudely told us we COULD NOT be in the building and we had to leave. He marched us out the doors, locked them behind us and left us to sit out on the concrete in the summer heat.
Who would do that in today’s world? There would be an uproar. It would be on the news. Kids locked outside in 100 degrees with no access to water! Live tonight at 6. We were so miserable. In hindsight, I should have just started walking to my grandmother’s house – it wasn’t super close, but google maps tells me it would’ve been a 20 minute walk. But knowing she wasn’t home when I called earlier, it probably wouldn’t have done much good, and then nobody would know where I was. I was worried mom would show up to pick me up while I was mid-walk… or sitting locked outside my grandma’s house, and freak out, with no clue where I was. So I waited.
(But even locked out of my grandma’s house I could have at least gone into the backyard and sat on a lawn chair in the shade instead of on the concrete in direct sunlight.)
Anyway. Mom didn’t show up until the time I’d have normally gotten out of class. I was drenched in sweat. Mom was apologetic. But back then you really couldn’t get mad about that kind of thing. Because there were no cell phones, she couldn’t have known.
And NOW a BONUS STORY!
About the time I wandered off without telling anybody where I was going (according to my mom) and everybody freaked out.
May have told this one before. Not sure. But this was my junior year (I think?) of high school, and in Spanish class, we had a project to make a pinata. We were groups of 3 and I was in a group with my friend and her boyfriend. It was due the next day, so we needed to make plans to get it done that night. (why were we only given one night to do this? I have no idea.)
So it was decided we’d go to the boyfriend’s house after school and get it done quickly. Again, this was pre-cell phone. So I quickly tried to make arrangements so people knew where I was — I called our house on our school’s ancient pay phone, even though I knew no one was home. But I left a message on the machine so when she got home from work, she’d know why I wasn’t home.
Then just to make doubly sure, I put a note in my cousin’s locker asking her to please tell my mom when she showed up to pick me up where I’d gone, or call my mom later and make sure she knew where I was.
Then I rode over to the boyfriend’s house to make a really dumb looking donkey pinata. (This was before I had my own car so I was getting dropped off and picked up by my parents everyday.)
So we worked on the pinata and nearing the end of the project, the boyfriend’s mom comes into the kitchen with a concerned look and tells me my mom is on the phone. And I’m confused because how did she get this phone number? So I take the phone and I might as well have gotten a freaking HOWLER from Harry Potter. She was FURIOUS. She’d been looking for me for AGES and FREAKING OUT.
As it turns out… it was another one of those days where my uncle and cousins had left school early. I had no idea. So my cousin wasn’t still at school to tell my mom where I was. She hadn’t even seen the note because she was gone. And since mom came straight to the school to get me without going home she’d never heard my message.
So she’d gotten there and PANICKED when she couldn’t find me anywhere. She had the whole staff still at the school looking for me. Calling everybody they could think of. The guidance counselor was helping and told mom “Maybe she went home with friends.” And mom was like, “SHE DOESN’T HAVE FRIENDS” (which was kinda true LOL but I did have one friend and I was with her!). They called my fav art teacher. They called my entire family to see if I was with them. They were on the verge of calling the cops when SOMEBODY — and now I can’t remember how it was solved – figured it out and got the directory out and mom called the boyfriend’s house number.
Guys, I was in so much trouble. I don’t think I’ve ever been in that much trouble. Mom came and got me and brought me home. And then you know what she did? She made me listen to all the voicemail messages on our machine at home. First one – was me, telling mom where I was. Then there were about 15 more, of my whole family, calling me begging me to answer the phone if I was there. I can still hear my grandfather’s panicked voice telling me to please pick up the phone!
I was just TRYING TO BE A RESPONSIBLE STUDENT (which I never was.) and get my group project done. I thought I’d covered my bases. It was only due to circumstances I didn’t realize that none of my bases were actually covered.
The kicker of it, though? Because mom had gotten the whole school into a tizzy trying to find me, rumors had started. And you know how rumors go in school. For the next week, I had kids coming up and asking me if I’d really been kidnapped?!
Even years after I graduated at some school event I happened to be at, some kid said “Hey, weren’t you the kid who got kidnapped?” So that’s the story of how I got kidnapped.
The moral of all 3 stories: Thank God for Cellphones.