Lionel Remembering

I ran away from home when I was four. Actually, I ran away from home a lot; my mom says I started at two and a half. One time I ran away because someone had said "You stink, kid," to me and my parents called the police to find out where I was. That was the farthest I ever went, but when I was four I stayed closer to home. I went to Daddy's boat.  We hadn't taken it out for a long time, but I had liked to pretend I was a pirate.

It wasn't hard for my mom to find me, and as soon as she did, she started playing along with my little pirate fantasy. She even claimed to be an admiral, which upset me. Daddy had told me that ladies weren't admirals, and my mom was a lady.  As if that wasn't bad enough, she had to say "he's probably the biggest landlubber I know." She went on to talk about how she was an admiral (and only a lady in port) but I knew she was lying. If she was telling the truth, then that meant Daddy had lied. I didn't like the idea. In fact, I would always get upset when someone said something bad about Daddy. That was the reason I ran away in the first place; Sandra had called Daddy a "big sloppy kike."

As soon as I mentioned this to my mom, she switched tactics. Suddenly she wasn't an admiral anymore (not that she had ever been one). She said we were going to get Daddy from the station and bring him home so he could take us for a ride in his boat. We had raced back to the house and I got there way before her. I sometimes wonder if my mom was really that excited to get Daddy; she had seemed more interested in getting me out of the boat now that I think about it.