"me-time"
Not really a case of running away, but a seven year old only child freaking out when too many kids were playing with MY skip-it.

It was the eighties, in the West Midlands. All the daddies that worked for Jaguar (including mine), were at a union meeting about some kind of strike action to stop a factory site getting closed down, and all the Jag mums brought their kids round to our house after school to play until the meeting was over.

Cue - loads of children playing in MY back garden with MY toys (remember us only children are not at all used to sharing), and all their mums chatting in the kitchen about redundancies, oblivious to their kids outside. I'd had enough. I needed space. So I hopped on my bike "Violet" (with a fantastic boot-basket-thing, in which I stored a capri sun and a fun-size marathon for the journey), and took off in search of peace from the mob of children behind me - down the gravel entry towards hearsall woods.

I returned half an hour later, in the arms of a local builder who'd found me unconscious, embedded in my face a large portion of that very same gravel entry and missing most of my front teeth. Apparently I'd escaped too fast, and fallen off my bike head first over the handlebars yards from my house, and consequently skidded jackass-style face first along the alleyway, knocking out five of my teeth (Ham sandwiches were a no-go snack until my teeth grew back a year later), fracturing my eye socket, and completely skinning the right side of my face.

I looked like that ugly kid in the Cher film for weeks (or the phantom of the opera, if his mask was made of scabs), and wasn't allowed to be in the class photograph that year, as I looked too scary.

Remarkably, the incident only left me with a small moustache-themed scar and a fear of piloting my own transport, but still have a penchant for making dramatic exits from stressful situations.
(Supacherry, Mon 14 Aug 2006, 2:32, Reply)