Cold, Tired, and Needing to Pee

My favorite story as a child was the following, from my mother (written from her point of view).

When I was a girl, I absolutely knew I wanted to be a nurse. When I was ten, I saw an ad in a magazine, for a nursing correspondance course. I signed up immediately. The first test I scored a 75 (C average-- passing grade, midrange, for those who don't know our grading system. I guessed half of the answers. I was ten-- I didn't know what an enema was.

I got the bill in the mail. I had had no idea I would be expected to pay for this course. All I could think of was that Mother was going to kill me. I didn't know where to turn. I decided the only thing I could do was to run away.

After school the next day, I went out to the lake, to try to figure out where I was going to go and what I was going to do. I went wading, and washed my socks out. (Why my mother was obsessed with clean socks at that age, I have no idea.)

After awhile, I decided that if I were going to go, I had to start walking. It was starting to get dark, and I was scared. The trees cast strange shadows on the ground, and I was sure there was a monster behind each tree. I was cold, tired, and needed to pee. But I couldn't go home. My mother was going to kill me. I kept going. Holding my cross (necklace) tightly for moral courage, I found myself walking to the end of town, and started crossing the cornfields.

By this time my mother was, of course, frantic with worry. She'd called the police, the fire department, and everyone else she could think of. My sister told her I was headed for the lake after school, so the police started the search there.

When all they could find of me was a pair of wet socks and a bookbag, they were sure I had drowned. They began dragging the lake for my body.

I had no idea all of these people were searching for me. All I knew was that I was cold, tired, and needed to pee. I got through the first cornfield. It must have been 8 or 9 o'clock by then. My stomach was growling, I was filthy. I was cold, tired, and needed to pee. I was also scared to death of the noises in the fields. I turned for home.

Due to the police thinking I had drowned, the search had pretty much ended at the lake. I wandered back the way I had come, cold, tired, and needing to pee. And I had no idea they were looking for me. The tree shadows were still now, but the monsters kept making noises from the branches and behind the trees. It took me another hour or so to walk home. I was terrified, hungry, cold, tired, and I needed to pee.

My mother saw me coming, ran out of the house to hug me and shake me at the same time. The police and fire department were called off lake duty, and I got the lecture of my life. I was threatened with death if I ever ran away again, and I never did.

Mother did, of course, straighten out the bill with the nursing school, which was very impressed I had passed their first test, and offered to take me as a student when I graduated.

Hannah speaking again. This story always gave me delicious shivers when I was a little girl. Being an imaginative child, for months after she'd tell this story, I'd avoid trees, lakes, and policemen-- just in case.