Running Away to Safety

     Several years ago when my older son was only twenty-one, I asked a friend in San Francisco if my son could stay with him because he wanted to go out there to see a girl who was a sort of childhood sweetheart, a whole other story, except that she used to play with my son when he was little, because she and her parents lived upstairs from us.  I still have pictures of them playing together.
     While my son was in the bay area, I received a very disturbing phone call from my friend who my son was staying with.  My son had never come home the night before.  I told him without a moment's hesitation, call the police, which he did.  
     That afternoon Oprah was on and it was about twenty-one year olds disappearing and so I burned candles that night against his picture.  Normally I turn the phone off at night for sleep hygiene, but of course I left it on.
     My son called at four A.M., my time, one A.M., California time.  My son escaped without his belongings.  He had been abducted and was being kept against his will.  When his captor finally fell asleep, he made a run for it, not chancing trying to get anything, for fear of waking his abductor.  He ran barefoot to a soup kitchen he remembered going to with this kidnapper and called my friend Ben who he was staying with who went to pick him up.
      He cried a lot and had to come home early, did not have his glasses and Ben sent him home.  He felt bad for having gone with a stranger who said, "we're out of fuel."  Yes, just like on the cop shows, someone pretended to need help to grab someone.  My son felt bad, more than bad for what happened, but I said, "you were so much stronger than I ever was."  I stayed with an abusive monster for several years and could not get away, but he was brave enough to run away, and I was truly impressed and relieved and grateful.
     When I was a substitute teacher, I recall teaching kindergarten and their weekly reader was a drill about safety, things I drilled my own boys on like for example:  what do you do when someone touches you or talks to you in a way that is 'yucky'?  The children shouted in unison, "run away!  Tell someone!"  Another:  someone asks you to help him look for his lost puppy.  "Run away!  Tell someone!"  And so on, you find a gun, a needle, etc...  The answer was always, "run away and tell someone."  I am proud of my older son, because that is what he did.