Lionel Monologue

Although I remember that day quite clear, one significant detail stands out. I lied to my mother’s face for the first time in my entire life. To this day, she still believes the reason I ran away was because of the incident where my dad was called a kike. In all honesty, that was not the reason at all. How could it be if I didn’t even know what that was?

That morning my dad didn’t wake me up before he left for work. Every morning before that he would wake me up and I would eat breakfast with him. Not that day. Being one of the only dads I know who worked during the summer, he made sure he spent as much time as possible with me before he left. When I finally awoke at about 9 o’clock, I realized what disaster had just occurred. In my four-year-old mind, I made the worst situation possible in my head. I believed my dad had ran away himself and didn’t wake me up because he would think I would try to stop him, which I would have. Well anyway, I panicked and told myself I would run away myself because I couldn’t stand to be alone with mom forever. I also wanted to be just like my dad and if he ran away, I would too. So that’s exactly what I did.

When my mom came down to try to get me to come back, I told her about the first thing that came to my mind and that was that dad had been called a “kite.” I wondered if that was offensive or not to call someone. Anyway, the reason why I cried is because I realized that it doesn’t matter if dad runs away because I would always have mom to care for me, just like she did that day. It almost seems like dad did run away considering the amount of time I see him these days.