I was a teenage runaway

When I was 15 I ran away from home.
It was 1987.
It was the day after Martin Luther King Day, and there was a blizzard approaching.
I had saved around $250 in cash gifts from a recent birthday party.
My plan was to get to Florida, because it was warm there.
From there I would somehow get to Jamaica, and join a reggae band.
If I didn’t get that far, then I’d join a rock band.
It made sense to my 15 year-old mind.
I went to Penn Station, and took a train to Miami.
It was a 26 hour ride, giving me ample time to think and draw.
Long train rides have a way of inducing reflection in its passengers.
I was convinced I was doing the right thing.
Once I arrived in Miami, late at night, I realized that the train station was nowhere near the center of the city.
How would I get there?
I took a taxi, but had very little money to pay for the fare.
I told the driver to take me to the nearest Salvation Army.
On the ride we spoke, and he figured out that I was a runaway.
Instead he took me to a police station.
At the station, a policeman called my parents, and I spoke with them.
My mother’s voice was stoic, while my father sobbed on the phone.
I felt very sad by the pain I had caused them by leaving.
My parents flew me back home the next day, and the police took me to a runaway home for the remainder of the night.
The next morning, at breakfast I met the residents.
Girls and boys, lost, lonely, and hopeless.
I did some assigned chores, like the residents.
I spoke to a counselor.
I went to the airport, left Miami and arrived at LaGuardia.
My mother and uncle were there to receive me.
It was a quiet ride home.
At home, my room felt sterile, the police had gone through all my belongings.
They had read all my letters.
Everyone at school knew that I had run away.
The school had been scandalized; rumors abound for my reasons for leaving.
They never thought that it was because of them, because wanted to be someplace else.
I had earned the respect of some kids because I did what they only fantasized about.
I hated that place, I hated those people, and I still wanted to leave.
I felt a profound sense of sadness for my parents and myself.
I took the police officer’s advice, and waited to go to college.

Years later when asked by my siblings to recount this experience,
I can hear my father sobbing over the phone, and I weep.