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BRI ELLIOT
WEB LEAD + DESIGNER

Re: Childhood Stories

I was in the third grade, living in Virginia. My friend and I made these insanely unrealistic plans to run away from home. Our goal was to get to California to have a better chance at becoming huge pop stars. The plan? Hitchhiking.
We prepared for days, secretly taking big duffle bags from our parents, slowly collecting food (these were snacks of no nutritional value). We took it as far as mapping out how many days our food would last before we needed money. Money, which we both had none of. We were terrified to steal it from our parents. Our plan was to get a job at a Target along the way. We thought if we told the employees our plan, they’d have sympathy and break child labor laws for us lol. We really thought this was foolproof.

On the day of our big departure, we packed our clothes, a portable CD player, a deck of cards, and wrote letters to our families explaining why we had to leave. Finally, it was dark outside so we snuck out of my friend’s house, leaving both of our notes on her bed (I think I assumed they’d relay the message to my parents), and started towards the entrance of her neighborhood. Keep in mind, we had on all black so we wouldn’t be seen… basically a death wish.

We actually made it about a mile down the main road and then we hear a vehicle flying down the road beeping their horn. My friend’s dad looked like he was about to have a brain aneurysm. He yelled at us to get in the truck and explain what we thought we were doing. Well, Rodney, your daughter and I legitimately believed two eight-year-olds could get to the other side of the country on their own with zero dollars! Unfortunately, our travels ended right then.

We received a long lecture on the horrors of the world and the awful things people have done to children. It’s safe to say I was 100% sure I would never attempt that again. My friend, however, wanted fame much more than I and she ended up trying again on her own. Not sure I remember how far she got that time, but fortunately, nothing bad happened to either of us and her dad never told my parents we tried to make a run for it!