I don't recall is a statement I have used to avoid unpleasant memories or truthful admissions that were in my mind better left unsaid and to someone elses imagination,think what you will is all you would hear and only if you had an ability to mind read.
There are things that are vividly stuck in my head and on this day I'm recalling an incident that occurred the day before Easter when I was eleven or twelve.
Can you believe that I at the age of eleven.
.
.
or twelve,decided that enduring one more day of sufferance at the hands of stifling home rule was just not going to happen and it was time a stand was made, I would show them yep that's right bub!So with a determined confidence built up inside,plans were hatched to escape the oppressive situation and we were off.
I said we because this was an undertaking that was better taken with the company of my younger brother by about two years as there was at the same time a developing anxiety about going it alone and besides two heads are always better than one am I right? Off we ventured into the wild black yonder of the highway with our thumbs in the wind and as luck would have it our ride happened along quite quickly.
The guy asked where we were off to and me being the older more experienced storyteller said we were on our way to Rochester to visit a friend.
I didn't know where Rochester was located at the time but I'd heard the name before so it seemed a likely choice to make and it must have been in the general direction he was traveling because he said he could bring us half way at least.
Half way there landed us in Salem and wow there we were staring at rt.
twenty-eight with no idea for which direction to go and starting to feel just a little bit funky.
(a bit of anxiety)I didn't know it at the time(as I didn't hear it till twenty years later) but according to that quote about "doing something even if it's wrong" we were right on track with a quarter toss and headed in the heads winning direction(unbeknownst to us at the time homeward)We walked for what seemed like an eternity stopping once at a corner store to fill up on some coke and Twinkies and continuing on.
We were really starting to get tired of walking and noticing the sun sinking in the sky brought on an anxiety I never experienced before.
Questions of where were we, where were we going and where would we sleep flooded my mind and I could tell my brother was feeling much the same when we noticed a sign with an arrow pointing to Boston twenty miles that way.
For the first time all day I actually felt good about our direction towards Boston because our home was somewhere along that way.
We walked and walked wishing it would just be over with and in some way I think we would have made it but as luck would have it an unmarked state police cruiser pulled along side as we walked along an on ramp to the highway.
Where are you guys headed the trooper asked and we told him we were going home to woburn.
where are you coming from he asked and we told him we were coming from a visit with my friend that lived in Rochester and he said get in I'll give you a ride.
Glad were we that he gave us a ride right to the house because that would have been one hell of a walk home.
There was no talking once inside the house, just a straight to bed order and the lack of an easter basket the next morning was not unexpected,a grounding order was instituted for a month and yet it was all OK as we were home safe and sound.
There is a story line here that shows how two young kids walked themselves into, through and out the other side of anxiety just by putting one foot in front of the other and for no other reason than they knew no other way.