Did you ever run away from home? How far did you get?

This is Number 36 in the 100 Journal Topics from the old angelfire page I found. I read this the first time before the boy’s soccer practice on Tuesday, and thought about it. Then I didn’t think about it.

So today when I realized I had a few moments to myself, I got right to writing.

Right after I checked my email a dozen times, messed around on twitter, played a game on facebook, and looked at pinterest. Then I got right to writing.

I really don’t remember ever really trying to run away from home. Marissa did once, but she only went as far as the row of trees to the south of our driveway. She set up camp there and read a book. So not that far.

In fact, the first thing that actually popped in my mind was when I was a young married lass living in an apartment in Alva. Ben and I got in some kind of dumb fight – who even knows what it was about now? Ben, maybe. He’s good at remembering things like that. Anyway, I got mad and I stormed out of the apartment.

Maybe I expected him to come rushing after me. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I had neglected to get my car keys. Or my shoes.

So there I am, barefoot and hacked off. It’s dark outside – late in the evening. There is no way I am going back in that apartment. He can just eat it.

So I thought about it for a while, and then I walked to some friends’ apartment. The walk was maybe four blocks, and it was grassy, so not a big deal. I think the most troublesome spot was the street right in front of their apartment, which was frequently gravelly or sported broken glass. But I persevered.

I went up to their apartment, plopped down on the couch, and watched them play video games for a couple of hours.

Ben called once, but they had strict orders to tell him I wasn’t there, and they performed admirably.

So Ben’s sitting at home, not sure when I am. He knows I didn’t take a car, and that I don’t have shoes, and that I’m not at our friends’ place.

I don’t know if he went looking for me. He probably did.

I do know that he called my parents and asked them to watch out for me.

My parents lived three hours away by car.

My dad gets on the phone and listens to Ben’s worry – that I’m walking 150 miles without shoes. Dad tells Ben that he doesn’t think I will do that. Ben says that I was pretty mad. Mom and Dad promise they will keep an eye out, but they aren’t concerned.

They know me well.

Ben thought I was making a terrible barefoot trek home to my parents, à la “The Long Walk” by Stephen King. Instead I was sitting between two handsome guys with my feet on the coffee table, watching Mortal Kombat moves.

Seriously – one of the guys knew every fatality and friendship move. It was awesome.

I don’t remember how I ended up going home that night. Maybe I called Ben, or maybe he called again and one of the guys confessed. Maybe I got a ride home. Obviously we were able to make up.

So I guess that’s it for my running-away story. Ben thought I was going halfway across the state, but I went four blocks and had a nice evening.

This probably shows that I’m not quite as crazy as he thinks I am.

Did you ever see a ghost?

Yeah…maybe.

I went a long time saying I’d never seen a ghost. That’s not to say I don’t believe in things like that…I was just apparently not attuned to such things. Thankfully.

I know my grandma saw something when she was a young woman. She was living with my mom in a house (or duplex, maybe) in Alva, and she saw a lady come up through the floor and on through the ceiling.

I think they moved rather quickly after that.

My mother also saw something once. She was in bed and woke. My dad was asleep next to her. He had cancer at that point, and I think I was in college. So Mom saw two women up high in the corner of her room, sitting and talking. She couldn’t really hear or understand what they were talking about, but she felt calm about it – like maybe they were watching over my dad when he was sick. Then one woman looked and saw that Mom could see her, and then the other looked, and then they disappeared.

I think seeing either of those things would have made me lose my mind. I have always had a terrible, vivid imagination that makes me see things that aren’t there. I’m still afraid of the dark. I still imagine horrible claws and evil beings just out of my line of vision. I should probably write horror. Speaking of which, when I read It by Stephen King, I was in junior high. At night, I would put it on the front porch so I could sleep. That way it was locked outside.

But. Did I ever see a ghost. All I got is this:

I was upstairs in my room, reading or something, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Ben walk by out in the hall, toward the kids’ rooms. He was wearing a green shirt. I looked up and waited for him to come back, but he didn’t. I thought it was odd that he would be hanging out in one of their rooms, so I got up and looked for him. He wasn’t in there. He was downstairs watching TV. He wasn’t wearing green. None of the kids were wearing green. I know I saw somebody.

And:

Another time I heard Ben calling me, clear as a bell, but when I got up to see what he was hollering about, he wasn’t anywhere near and hadn’t been calling me. I would swear I heard him calling my name.

So those were weird.

Write about something you desperately wanted as a kid.

This is my first post to write for reals on my writing website. The others were from 2009 and 2010. I started doing the 100 Journal Entries on Livejournal, as a way to get back into writing after my years at the newspaper. My baby was about to turn two when I started.

Then my sister, Marissa, died in November 2009. That was a serious life-changer for me. I went through a long time of depression and I didn’t do much of anything. I tried to pick up the 100 Journal Entries again in late 2010, but I only did a couple before letting it go again.

So here we are. I wrote my first young adult novel last year, and I’ve followed it with more. The experts advise having a website to make it easy for publishing people to find you, so here this is. Of course, it’s supposed to be professional, and instead finances dictated that I do it myself with my limited knowledge, so we’ll see how that goes.

But what I desperately wanted. That’s what I’m supposed to be focusing on.

When I first started thinking about this, my mind went to material things. Then I started thinking about how I always wanted to be a writer.

But you know what I desperately, desperately wanted? I wanted friends.

My best friend as a little girl was Becky. She was marvelous, and I loved her very much. Only having one friend was great, except for when she had to miss school or something, and then I was lonely at recess and lunchtime.

That was okay with me, but I don’t think it was good for her. Of course, I’m only seeing it from my point of view, but she decided she wanted to be part of a group of girls, and they didn’t want me, so she left me for them. I thought I was welcome to come along, but I learned that wasn’t true at lunch one day. She and the group of girls were sitting together, and I went and sat with them. They got up and moved to a new spot. I was confused, and thought maybe they just wanted us all to move, so I followed them.

And then they moved again.

When I realized what was happening, I was heartbroken. I sat there and ate my lunch as best I could, then escaped to the bathroom to cry. It was one of the most tragic moments of my young life, and I still feel pain when I think about it now.

That painful day paved a path to several unhappy years in my life. I went through junior high without one friend. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it was true. It’s not to say everyone was mean to me – some were and some weren’t. But I had no friend. Every day I ate lunch alone. I started to bring a book so at least I looked like I was doing something. When we paired off in classrooms, no one paired with me. When the gym teacher had two people pick teams, I was always picked last. I’m not trying to make people feel sorry for me. It’s just the way it was. Someone had to be picked last. It was always me.

Sometimes my mom would come and pick me up for lunch. What a delight it was to see the station wagon with her inside and know that I didn’t have to be alone at lunchtime! She would ask me sometimes if I wanted to transfer – to a church school in the city, maybe – but I said no. Part of my perfectionism, I guess. I wanted to stay at the same school until graduation.

Things got better in high school. My sister was a senior when I was a freshman, and she welcomed me to her nerdy little group. Don’t get me wrong. I liked them all and they were very much preferred to being alone. I’m pretty sure they knew they were nerdy. It’s cool. Marissa taking me under her wing gave me what I needed to get back into the swing of things. After that year, I was able to connect with some people who were in band with me. Not people in my grade though. I never was able to really fit in there.

So that’s what I wanted as a kid – at least after Becky and before high school. I wanted a friend. I wanted a friend so badly.

I sometimes wonder if that experience was what led me primarily to homeschool. It seems like there are many factors, but surely that is a big one. And how would I be different if I hadn’t spent those years alone? Looking back now, I wouldn’t change it. I like myself too much now to change something that had such an effect on my life.

Not wanting to change it doesn’t make it right, though. It’s not right that any kid should have to be without a single friend.

Did you ever win or lose a contest?

Did I ever win or lose a contest. No, because I have been living under a rock my entire life. Of course I have won or lost a contest! For pity’s sake, 100 Journal Topics. Be realistic.

There is a picture of me in my baby book, sitting on the counter at McDonald’s. I am three years old in the picture. It is a Polaroid two-step photograph – you know, the ones where you take the picture and then kind of shake it back and forth and then after a minute or so, you peel off the cover and there it is? I am sitting next to an Easter basket that contains a lot of fun things and a stuffed monkey. Next to the photograph is Mom’s writing, telling me that I’m a lucky girl and I won the basket, and that there were 530 names in the hopper.

Because of this, I have always been considered “lucky.” When Mom signs up for contests, she sometimes puts my name because I’m luckier than her.

And just now, looking at the topic, I realize that it says contest, not drawing, and that I’m going about this the wrong way. So yes, I won contests too. Tuttle Talent Show and 4-H and all that stuff. I also won a prize from the Daily Oklahoman in their Valentine’s Day classified ad contest. I’ll veer over that way for a moment, then get back to the drawings.

I read in the Oklahoman that they were having a Valentine’s Day contest. This was in the year 2000. You had to buy a classified ad, and then the best one would win a limo ride, and roses, and dinner at the Haunted House in Oklahoma City. I decided I would like to win this contest.

So I composed a poem, and e-mailed it to the Oklahoman. I paid for the ad with a credit card. The ad cost about $50, because it was so long, but I knew I would win it so it was okay. And I did win it. I felt a little sorry for all the other people who bought ads, thinking they might win, when they didn’t have a chance against my dazzling poem.

I was going to reprint it here, but it wasn’t in the first place I looked. I tried to get into the Oklahoman archives, but my password isn’t working. So I sent an email about it. And then I waited a while. And then I gave up and got back to it. You can trust me…it was a good poem. It was based on “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer. It was about Ben.

So I won that contest. Ben and I went to the Haunted House restaurant with the $50 gift certificate I won. We actually had to spend some of our own money – that’s how expensive that place was. Classy. He picked up the dozen roses from Trochta’s flowers for me. I decided to save the free limo ride until Christmas, and then we got the biggest limo they had and took Mom, her friend, my sisters and their families on a Oklahoma City Christmas light tour. It was pretty neat. There was only one seat belt in the limo, and we strapped Lenora’s car seat there.

So – back to what I wanted to write about. My luck. This is a good one.

One year, Karlene, Marissa and I took mom on a little birthday trip to Cherokee, Okla. for their centennial celebration. Now, I was feeling lucky. I can hardly describe it. I have never felt lucky like that before or since. But I knew that I was destined to win something. I kept asking Ben to take a weekend trip to Kansas so I could buy a lottery ticket. I knew I would win. I knew it. It was inevitable. We didn’t go. No one believed me.

But we took mom to Cherokee, which is a mere half-hour from the Kansas border. I asked to go to Kansas while we were there, but no one wanted to.

We got our tickets for the centennial party, which included a stagecoach ride, a barbecue dinner, admittance to a play, and a chance to win both the centennial quilt or the centennial gun.

I wanted to play the lottery so bad. Instead, I found myself standing in line in Cherokee, waiting to buy my ticket. I remember looking from the gun to the quilt, and back again. I thought, word for word, Will it be the quilt or the gun? I hope it’s the quilt. Again, I knew I was going to win. There was no doubt in my mind that either that quilt or that gun would be mine. I decided that whatever I won, I would give it to Mom, since Cherokee was where she was born and it was her birthday weekend.

We had fun in Cherokee and left before the play, which is when the drawings were made. But you did not need to be present to win.

When Mom called me the next day, she was giddy with the news. She called and told me I was not going to believe it, but she had talked to Lenora P…

In my head: I know why you’re calling Mom, is it the quilt or the gun?

…and it was the quilt. I won the centennial quilt. Mom hinted around that she wanted it. I told her she could have it. It hangs in her living room now.

I knew I was going to win something. I still can’t believe how lucky I felt, and how assured I was of it.

I reminded Mom of how I knew I was going to win something. I told her that I knew without a doubt I was going to win one of the centennial raffles. I reminded her of how I had wanted to play the lottery. She asked me why on earth I didn’t talk them into taking me up to Kansas. Apparently they would have taken me if they had known that I was really going to win. Hmm.

And that’s the story of how I was lucky enough to win anything – and instead of playing the lottery and becoming a millionaire, I won a quilt.