I Tried To Run Away
Got as far as Heathrow where they wouldn't let me take drinks or books on the plane, herded me into a marquee for three days and constantly cancelled my flights.

I gave up in the end...
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 10:01, Reply)

Longest toilet break ever...
... working at a large company in Brighton, let's pluck a name at random and call it AMEX, and after a fortnight of being shouted at, belittled, baffled and bamboozled at having to a complex job with NO TRAINING WHATSOEVER...

... about five months ago one Friday I thought, "hey, it's Friday, to hell with this load of shitballs" so I decided to rock n' roll with a cheerful toilet break.

Having announced my intentions in polite terms, I stood up. Got my coat. Got my bag. Started walking. And walked past the toilets. Got in the lift. Pressed the button for "Ground Floor." I walked past the turning for the cafe, through the turnstiles and out of the revolving doors.

I'm thirty, I'm going grey, I've had enough of working for The Man. I figure I looked a little like George Clooney in the opening scenes of Out Of Sight.

Or perhaps my former colleagues are still sat there beside an empty desk thinking "he's been gone a long time."
(Error 404 - Username Unknown, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 10:00, Reply)

My step-mum's cat.
The best one out of the 3, even though I'm not that fond of cats, ran away.

After a couple of hours of searching we found her with the next door neighbour. So we left the cat to it thinking she would come home soon.
She never did.

Naturally I assumed Lizzy the cat had suffered a bout of amnesia while on her morning prowl and come to, finding herself in an unknown garden and seeking out the nearest human to care for her.
She had no memory of her past, her family or her brother cats and since I can't speak cat I couldn't talk her into coming back.

So Lizzy started her new life next door, no longer responding to her name and treating me as a total stranger.
The next day I found out the real reason she had ran away. There was a giant dead moth left by Lizzy in my cornflakes. She had obviously been off her face on cat-nip one night and done some shameful and unspeakable things with this moth and fearing my retribution, ran away to live in shame forever.

I had the last laugh though, my Dad got a dog and Lizzy died.
(Bellamy's Enemy, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 9:04, Reply)

Pecking Order
My brother and I have never gotten along, in my youth, he terrorised me, him being the older brother. He made my young life rather miserable.
At the age of 15, him 18, we got into a fight about something or other, only this time I didn't back down, I'd done alot of growing that year and may even have been bigger than him at that time. The fight descended into fisticuffs when something happened, he started to back down, actually he started to try and run from me, so I punched him in the back of the head and he went down hard. I think I knocked him cold.
I panicked and ran, with the idea that when my parents got home they'd kill me so I could never return. Well after I'd calmed down for half an hour or so, I went back to face the music. Nothing happened, my parents seemed blissfully unaware, my brother and I exchanged an odd look and we never spoke of the incident. Our relationship changed that day forever. I'm the big brother now.
(The Cosmic Fool Became aware that the bird is indeed the word on, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 7:11, Reply)

Adelaide
I was born in Adelaide and have been running away from the place ever since. A visiting comedian once said that Adelaide was just a big airport transit lounge; people sitting around waiting to leave.

I got out of there by going to university. I picked Northern Territory University because it was the place of learning furthest away from Adelaide. I then drank myself stupid for the next five years but that's another story.

When I was at uni I would meet other people from Adelaide who would invariably say "I see you've avoided the Adelaide curse as well". The Adelaide curse was to have three kids by two different partners and living in Housing Trust accomodation by 25.

My mate Tony, the only person I keep in contact with from school, went to our school's ten year reunion a few years back. He said it was the most depressing night of his life. Tony escaped the Adelaide curse by becoming a professional tennis player based in Germany who returns to Adelaide for a month or so each year. Yet, the highlight of one former fellow student's life since leaving school was that he once went to Melbourne for a weekend. Another ex-classmate was the envy of others because she had just moved into a new Housing Trust unit with her two kids (by two different fathers). Infact, according to Tony, the most discussed topic of the evening was the fact that I had appeared on a tv quiz show six months before (the second most discussed conversation was who had been to gaol and for what reason).

Adelaide; nice place to visit but if you're living there, for God sakes run away.
(Hammer of Justice, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 6:13, Reply)

Lt Columbo
Fuck off, I staked my claim back in "Crap Meals Out". I'll scratch your eyes out!
(SusK, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 4:44, Reply)

Sunny Spain
is a lovely place, especially when it's your first holiday away from the folks with your best drinking buddies.

Anyhoo, on the last night there I had run out of money and could only afford 3 or 4 pints, but before I left the hotel that night I remembered that I'd bought an 8th of weed off some dodgy bloke in a nightclub a few days previous. Knowing that I couldn't take it on the plane home with me I decided to eat it all.

Great idea as I giggled the first couple of hours away. Great idea until the wallpaper in the pub started to move and I started laughing hysterically. I woke up about 6 hours later under my bed in the hotel room shivering, not knowing really what went on.

I tried to piece together events, but I'm not really sure what order these things happened in...

First things first I told my friends that I was going back to the hotel because I felt 'fucked' in as many words, and then there are several events which meant I had to run rather quickly (are you still with me?)

As far as I can remember I was walking past a bar our 'reps' had told us not to go in because it was a favourite haunt of lager swilling Germans, I thought it was really funny to storm in, stand bolt upright, raise my right arm in that famous salute and shout 'SIEG HEIL!' - I had to run rather quickly.

Next thing I think I did was to roundly abuse the local spanish police, flicking them the victory V and yelling 'You bastards are twice as good as our police!' - again I had to escape rather quickly.

Finally I remember vaguely lying in the surf on the beach throwing up my guts and heckling distant figures who I assumed were women - I was correct; Que an angry spanish man chasing me down the beach, while I flailed along, soaked to the bone covered in vomit.

While I was piecing this together in my mind, my mate fell in face first through the door and fell asleep on the cold tile floor.

What a dick I am.
(Biromunch, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 3:22, Reply)

The not-so great escape
One day I decided to take my little bicycle out and run off from my home in a farming community. I made it six miles to one of the local shops before my mother noticed me riding along.
(not-a-brit Just another reason to bomb Lithuania, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 3:15, Reply)

The cat ran away...
But the cat came back the very next day,
The cat came back, we thought he was a goner
But the cat came back; it just couldn't stay away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea
(Mac-Man McMountie " Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers! ", Tue 15 Aug 2006, 3:05, Reply)

Oooooo, it really turns me on when someone talks about Sir Ian Holm CBE

Right, get your coat apeloverage, tonight's your lucky night for you've just pulled me........hello??....u there????....where r u??.....has he dun a runner??
(Lt Columbo, Tue 15 Aug 2006, 0:56, Reply)

I once ran in the opposite direction

to famous actor Sir Ian Holm CBE, so technically...I'll get me coat.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 23:18, Reply)

I don't want the navy treatment
My dad was in the navy and was quite strict with me and my brothers (mainly because we were a bunch of hyperactive sods who like to nearly kill each other on a daily basis). He used to box and had hands that looked like they could punch through your face and come out the back of your skull, but he was a born-again christian and would never raise a hand to us. Despite the fact that he had a really rough and poor childhood, I never once heard him say 'Fuck'.

When I was fourteen, I liked to get his attention by telling him that there was no god and that people that believed in that sort of thing were just superstitious fools. Cue a heated argument where neither of us would listen to each other and eventually storm off to our respective santuaries (I had my bedroom, dad had the toilet).

One day I got a bit too passionate, started yelling, and eventually told my dad to 'Oh just fuck off!'.

The minute it was out of my mouth, I knew I'd finally pushed it a bit too far.

Long pause. Long, long pause.

It was the first time I'd ever told my dad to fuck off, and I think it shook him. He jumped up from the sofa and shouted, "That's it! You're going to get the full navy treatment now!" He then charged at me with death in his eyes.

Not wanting to find out what the 'full navy treatment' was, I ran around our thick oak dining table. We then did that 'one person walks around the table and the other walks the opposite way' dance. We did four circuits until, out of frustration, he banged his fist down on the table.

And fuck me, the fucking table broke in half.

I now believed I was dead for certain. I'd pushed him too far. He'd snapped. He'd just broken an inch-thick oak table in half with a single bang from one of his huge, meaty fists. What the hell was he going to do to me?

So I run upstairs into the bathroom, shut the door, lock it, and retreat to sit down on the toilet, quailing in fear. My non-violent, god-fearing, lovely father kicks the door down. I don't think he even broke his stride. It was like that final John Goodman scene out of Barton Fink.

I'm cornered in the bathroom and I'm convinced that I'm going to get the beating of my life. But my dad won't raise a hand to me. Even though he's broken a table and kicked a door in, he won't actually lay a finger on his son.

I leg it, and he lets me go. I run straight out of the house and keep going for about ten miles. I don't have any shoes on, don't have a coat, don't have anywhere to go, but I'm convinced I'm never going to return home. I want to punish my dad by making him worry. I want to disappear forever. And I'm so pumped on adrenalin that I've almost done a half marathon when normally I'd get out of running at school by strategically throwing up after the first lap.

People in the local shopping centre gave me odd looks but didn't do anything. After wandering around for a bit I got to thinking about my future as a runaway. I was hungry. My Fred Perry socks were damp. I was starting to wonder how I'd get to university if I was living in a cardboard box. Would the school accept me back during daylight hours if I smelled of piss?

Eventually I decided I might as well go back home and apologise to my dad. I was too middle class to rough it. I liked television and creme eggs too much.

I'm walking back down the main road to home and in the distance I see this large man riding a small lady's happy shopper bike. It's my dad. His car's broken down and he's feeling terrible about losing his temper. He's gone out in search of his son to profusely apologise. He's pedaling like a freak on my mum's little bike.

Despite the fact that I was going home anyway, I sprint off in the opposite direction. If I was going home, I was going to do it on my own terms. He'd never catch me!

I'd run too much that night though and I got a stitch. So I stopped and waited for my happy-shopper-riding, oak-table-breaking, toilet-door-toppling, born-again-christian, never-said-fuck-in-front-of-me father to catch up.

He does and he looks awful. This is a man who's deeply ashamed of losing his temper and he's been shit-scared enough of losing me or any harm coming to me that he's riden that fucking silly bike around town like a prize gimp. We exchange shameful glances and I walk with him home. Along the way we have a really good talk. I apologise. He apologises. We're good friends again.

I like to think of this as my rite of passage into adulthood. My dad talked to me like I was an adult after that day, and I never told him to fuck off again.

I'm also glad I never found out what the 'navy treatment' actually is.
(Squirter, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 22:51, Reply)

I suppose it counts:
When she was about four or five, my sister ran away from home. She took my little blue plastic police tricycle, and wore nothing but red welly-boots.
I think she got about halfway down our road before my mum brought her back.

Same blue trike got nicked and we found it one day parked outside Safeway, but that's another story.
Just to clarify, this wasn't meant to be interesting.
(MNNNNGGH, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 22:47, Reply)

Blasted red suitcase!
When I was a child of only 4 years, I made my daring escape. I used a red Mickey Mouse suitcase to pack my things, it was made of plastic and was more an oversized lunchbox. I was a hardcore rapscallion, I filled it to the brim with biscuits and chocolate, there was no room for teddy bears and the like!
Got to the door, eased it open, and took a few paces out onto my drive. The damn Disney-substandard-merchandise then chooses this moment as an appropriate time to buckle, showering the drive with manys a snack. I then proceeded to ninja kick all the vagrants and chavs who swooped in on my precious cargo as I gathered it up in my hasty retreat indoors.
(last part may or may not be completely accurate).
( Uncle Phallus Strong like fly, fast like elephant, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 22:11, Reply)

Apparently
When I was five, I packed a few things into the pockets of my duffel coat. With teddy under one arm, I left the house, slamming the door behind me. I hid at the bottom of our drive, badly it seems, as my parents and older sister watched from the kitchen window. After a few minutes I returned, threw open the door and said "I'm giving you all one last chance". My memory is vague, but my family love regurtitating the story every year.
(echo3 can't draw (or spell), Mon 14 Aug 2006, 20:34, Reply)

I was a simple child
When I was 11 I ran away because I didn't want to go to my flute lesson. I took my beloved guinea pig, Gilbert and put on my coat and wandered the streets for 20 minutes singing Tainted Love by Soft Cell.

When my dad found me after 20 minutes, his response was "So I see you've brought Gilbert. Is he for company or food?"

My mum then made me go to the flute lesson, and when we arrived, told my flute teacher why exactly we were 20 minutes late. :(
(MC Kippers Wot U Lookin At, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 19:56, Reply)

SUBJECT
Our highscool lets kids drive their own cars to it (like many do), and they employed the janitor as a makeshift truancy officer to stop kids from leaving; especially on days with optional assemblies. Cue me making a break for it, even though he and a few other teachers had closed the parking lot gates and were directing cars away. Cue kids laughing at me for thinking I was going to get out early and calling me an idiot. Cue me leaving the school as I had other classes to attend at a college (school-sponsored program to shrink class sizes and let the people who aren't dipshits take good classes). Cue me laughing my ass off as I watch the kids run back to their cars to try it themselves...

Not really a getaway, but more smug self-satisfaction than the time the janitor followed me for three miles in his el camino trying to get me for truancy.
(denki, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 19:27, Reply)

There was also
the time I was being chased by a Psycho Killer.

I ran ran ran ran ran ran ran away.


I'll get my coat.
( sprinkles ITS AN ISLAND, morron, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 18:53, Reply)

When I was 8
I ran away from home with my dog, my mermaid barbie and a packet of skips.
I lived on a farm so I went and sat in the woods for a few hours. Then my dog went home. And I had eaten the skips so I was hungry. So I went home.

Turned out my mum hadnt noticed that I had even gone...
(gothikpixie I have sonic cursors...oh yes...how cool am i?, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 18:50, Reply)

We had a maths
teacher who used to keep the whole class in for at least the first 20 minutes of lunchtime every lesson.

Me and my friend never did anything in classtime anyway, so she was fucked if she thought we'd do anything at lunchtime.

Anywho, every lesson we found new and creative ways to escape from lessons.

I have a few favourite methods, one of which was convincing someone to walk out, then when she was chasing said decoy, run the other way out.
There was also the time we just decided to leg it out of the room quietly. This quietness was foiled by me knocking a bin off a desk on the way out, and pulling a spectacular cricket stylee dive to catch it to stop it making a noise.

There was also a cupboard which blocked a gap to a mong classroom, so we used to get in the cupboard and take the back board off, and escape through the class of mongs.
( sprinkles ITS AN ISLAND, morron, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 18:49, Reply)

Hmm
I ran away from school once - cause i didn't like the french lessons and the people in them!!!

I went and sat next to an abandoned railway for a while before i got bored and trudged back into school!!

Actully is that running away or Skiving?
(The lord Boo., Mon 14 Aug 2006, 18:12, Reply)

I'm still in trouble for this one after 20 years!
when I was 5/6 we all went to the pub round the corner, as was usual, this time however I was restless and wanted to go home, after nagging him for half an hour my Dad took me home, plonked me infront of the tele and left me alone after warning me to be a good boy and they'll see me in half an hour.

When they got home they found all the curtains in the house drawn, all the lights on, the TV on, the radio on, basically anything with an on switch on!

apparently after a good hours searching my Dad decided to go house to house to see if I'd gone round a neighbours, after another 30 minutes my Dad finally found me watching tele in a friends house, the next street but one.

he came in and asked me what I was doing here and I said infront of their whole family, "well dad, what was I supposed to do after you left me home alone and went to the pub"!

he still has a dig at me even after all these years!

sorry Dad, didn't know I was so shrewed!
(Starzy had a headache on, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 17:24, Reply)

Every morning
I look at my fuel gauge in my car & wonder how far it would take me if I just kept on driving...

Then I pull off onto the slip road and find my self at work.

Damn you, autonomic* responses!

*yes technically not correct, but what do i care?
( Hidden Mouse, Sleeping Kitten Gromada? Gromada!, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 17:17, Reply)

This topic is shite
Everyone runs away, then they come back. Later they grow up. The end. There's not much more scope, is there? Unless you lie ...

I ran away when I was 14. I joined a boat leaving Portsmouth and for five cruel years I was the ship's lad aboard "The Pegiron", a pirate barque. Sure, I was buggered roughly by all, and had my buttery skin coarsened by the lick of the lash, but I grew up and whored my way around the brothels of the Dutch East Indies.

Then I can home and had my tea. My mum stopped my pocket money and grounded me.
(frankspencer, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 17:15, Reply)

“You can hide, but you can’t run”…
...as I said to the war veteran dressed in camouflage gear but with no legs.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 16:57, Reply)

Parents Ran Away
Very similar to ralphseviltwin post but my parents ran off to the countryside and left me with the house to live in (I had just started College).
Frankly it was the best thing that happened to me, it was fantastic!
(Opanoid Look sweats dripping off them, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 16:17, Reply)

one time i was at the beach
i was attacked by a flock of seagulls.

oh i ran, i ran so far away.
(octoriot, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 15:55, Reply)

Ok
I was between 5 and 8, and I packed my teddy / other useless stuff and got to the front door / end of drive / end of road / nans house, then went home crying / got told off.

Teh end
(steh30, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 14:56, Reply)

Rommel ran away from my uncle
My uncle was a Desert Rat in the North Africa campaign of World-War II. I believe he was involved in the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942. Here is a description of the final stages of the battle written at the time:

"The desert, quivering in the heat haze, became a scene that defies sober description. It can be discerned only as a confused arena clouded by the bursts of high explosives, darkened by the smoke of scores of burning tanks and trucks, lit by the flashes of innumerable guns, shot through by red, green and white tracers, shaken by heavy bombing from the air and deafened by the artillery of both sides."

On November 4, the final assaults were underway. The British 1st , 7th and 10th armoured divisions passed through the German lines and were operating in the open desert. The Allies had won the battle. The axis were in retreat.

Thats right, my uncle (with 249,999 other men) made Rommel run away. For his part in the action he was mentioned in despatches and was awarded the bronze oak leaves. He fought on for the remainder of the war and was wounded several times. After the war he went back to his job as a lorry driver, got married, had kids and NEVER mentioned the war or his part in it. I remember him as a lovely man.

Although when I read about "Brave Kate Moss battling her coccaine addiction" he almost seems like a coward. (I'm being ironic BTW)

EDIT: or am I being sarcastic? Wasn't really 'ironic' was it. Yeah, sarcastic.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 14:55, Reply)

... and now he is a copper!
My mate was a big lad and well able to take care of himself in a ruck - if, and only if!, cornered with no other option but to dish out some justice.
He was famous for saving his own bacon at the expence of his mates.
One time the little cnut started mouthing off drunkenly at some guys outside a chippy at about 2 in the morning. Stupidly we stood up to back up our mate. There was a lot of the usual abuse back and forth before the first punch. There was 4 of them against 3 of us ... well it should have been 3!
When I looked around the bastard was nowhere to be seen. He had started it and scarpered off when it looked like getting rough.
We got our revenge by spiking him with imodium for 3 days on a camping trip before giving him a laxative to help him out!
Best of all is that he is now a cop! Apparently he carries a huge maglite these days and is known as Zoro by the other cops!
(fuzzynavelnose, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 14:09, Reply)