warrrreagl

Yesterday, my wife and I were shopping (she was trying on sweaters and I was holding her purse), when she emerged from the dressing room with an interesting thought.

"What if I came out of the dressing room and you were gone?" Since I was holding her purse, she would have found herself totally helpless. Her driver's license, cash, credit cards, and cell phone were all in the purse. I had the car keys, too. She would have been absolutely marooned in Macy's, with no way to leave and no way to call for help.

So, I started thinking about a time when I was ten years old that I had been left behind. It was probably in February and I was at the local Jr. High gym at rec-league basketball practice one night. My mother was supposed to pick me up after practice, and I stood outside the gym waiting for her. It was below freezing, and all I had on was a t-shirt, gym shorts, and gym shoes; no coat and no sweats. As each kid was picked up, I was offered ride after ride, but I knew better than to leave without my mother knowing about it. I opted to wait there for her, even though she was never, ever late. Eventually, the facilities guy locked up and left from another door, turning off all lights (inside and outside) as he left. I was standing completely alone in the dark in freezing weather and no hope of anyone else trustworthy coming by the gym that night.

Finally, over an hour later, my parents came screeching into the parking lot for me. It turns out that my father had taken the car so he could go jogging and had run into an old friend who gabbed and gabbed. He assumed one of my older siblings would have a car available to pick me up, but none of them were home, either. My mother had no way of calling anybody in the family or anyone at the gym (decades before cell phones) and all she could do was wait frantically and hysterically until someone with a car came back home.

It all turned out okay, but I was only ten, and I had some pretty freaky thoughts going through my head about being left behind as the minutes crawled by and each passing pair of headlights turned out to be somebody else.

Does anyone else have experiences about being left behind?

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greeneyes

I have never been left behind, but when my dad was younger, his family accidentally left behind his (then) three year old sister at a gas station while on vacation. She was there for two hours and apparently was never the same. Of course that might have something to do with the fact that my dad made sure to tell her every once in a while that it was no accident.

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So you don't feel a thing

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Pip

I had a similar experience when I was twelve, my best friend's dad was going to pick us up after a scout meeting in a remote area. He didn't know the way as good as he thought though, so me and my friend stood on the parking lot for half an hour in the dark before we decided to walk towards home. After another half hour we came upon a gas station where we could borrow a phone and call home. We were tired but never really scared since we had each other. Our parents were all worried though, a bit upset with my best friend's dad and with the scout leaders who left before we had been picked up.

ratbastid

I had a similar experience once. I was in High School, but I wasn't driving yet. I came home from a debate tournament with my team in the bus late one night. My parents knew when to pick me up, but when the scrum of students and parents cleared, I was the only person left. I stood outside the school in the cold, pacing and cursing for about an hour until my folks finally showed.

This was in the era before cell phones. Or, actually, my dad had a phone in his car, but I had no way to call anybody. I don't remember why they were late, but I do remember how mad I was.

That's nothing on this, though:

It's Thanksgiving, and we're at my Aunt Dot's house. Somehow the four of us in my immediate family (mom, dad, little brother age 8, me age 12) got there in two separate cars. When we all packed up and left, I rode with Dad, and my little brother rode with Mom. Except that when we got home, about 45 minutes away... there was no little brother! Somehow Mom thought that both the boys were riding in Dad's car, and we had completely abandoned my brother at Aunt Dot's. Again, in the era before cell phones, there was no way to let us know that until we got home--and when we walked into the house, the phone was ringing.

He was pretty upset. You can imagine.

ngdawg

I have had nightmares of being left behind-how awful for you! I wasn't actually left behind-only thought I was-when I was 8 and in sunday school. Mom wasn't there to pick me up and I didn't wait around-I began walking home-quite a distance and across a major highway. Not sure how I made it home-I just remember the hell I caught once there.

rhaevyn

I've been left behind many times. The main one that pops into my head was when I was in 3rd grade. My brother and I went to a private Catholic school, and after school we had to ride a bus to the local high school and THEN get on a high school bus to get home. Our bus was late, and when my brother found it, he thought I was with him, but I wasn't. The buses all left, and I couldn't find anybody I knew. my brother soon realized that I wasn't on the bus, but he couldn't get the driver to turn around and get me, and THEN the driver wouldn't let him off the bus so he could come back to me.

There are many more stories, and to this day, if I'm in a store with someone, I have to know where they are at all times because if I can't find them, I start to panic because I think they've left me. It's really quite sad.

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~Alex~

You've come far, and though you're far from the end, you don't mind where you are, 'cause you know where you've been.

maleficent

Not sure if this qualifies... but when I was a freshman in college, my family moved to another state (OK, not all that far, from Connecticut to New Jersey) but somehow, in the entire selling the house, buying a new house, moving process, they neglected to tell me. My mother always called me to ask when I was coming home for Christmas -- I gave her the date.. and she said, Oh let me give you directions.

'scuse me?
Oh, we didn't tell you... we moved.
(really felt the family love there)

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ARTelevision

Good thread, warrrreagl.

I've never been left behind, though, so I can't contribute a personal story.

I just want to say "fascinating" and thanks.

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martinguerre

x-country skiing...was quite young, i forget the age. my mom goes to do a steep hill with her friend...and tells me to wait at teh bottom.

i wait. and wait. And get impatient. So i start heading up. It's a long ass hill...and the first part is just the beginning...the trail twists, and all i can see is it going up and up and up. More twist...more hill.

Finally..get to the top. No mother. I wait. And finally...decide i have to go back down. basically sat on my skis so i couldn't pick up too much speed...or at least be close to the ground if i crash. used my butt as a brake, and made my way down.

my mother is at the bottom...frantically searching.

i think i got in some trouble for that one...but i think it was the "dammit, i'm so glad to see you" trouble.

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SecretMethod70

heh, I can only imagine. That must have been quite odd.

I'm not sure if I've ever been or felt left behind. I probably have but I can't think of anything offhand.

Anyway, I'm finding these stories interesting as well.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Squishor

Along with Rhaevyn, I have been left behind many times. This story is basically the story if my childhood. Now I have "issues."

It wasn't so much that my mother would actually forget all about me though, it was more that life was chaotic I guess. Anyhow I spent many many long hours sitting somewhere feeling alone...how sad. Folks, don't let this happen to your kids, okay?

rhaevyn

My parents actually FORGOT me and my siblings. It's happened to all of us several times.

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~Alex~

You've come far, and though you're far from the end, you don't mind where you are, 'cause you know where you've been.

indigochild111

Wow, I can't believe the adults at the school would just leave you behind?! I have a story similar to some of these. When I was in sixth grade, our class went on a five day trip to Washington D.C. We came home on a Friday night. Now, my parents are divorced, so I visited my dad on the weekends. My mom had a night job on Friday night. She always brought our dog over to our friend's house so she didn't have to leave her for 12 hours alone in our house. The friend had a son who went on the trip with me, and he had just gotten home. So she decides to call my dad's house, figuring I must be there by now. (He was s'posed to be picking me up since I was staying at his house). She calls and the phone rings and rings, and finally my very sleepy father answers the phone. He had fallen asleep and forgot to come pick me up! She tells me that as soon as she realized he had been sleeping, she dropped the phone, ran out the door, and sped all the way to the school to come and get me. Needless to say she was *pissed* at my father for forgetting to come get me. And the poor teachers who had been chaperoning us for five days had to stay and wait until someone came to get me. The really funny thing about it is that my mom never told my dad she was coming to get me, so by the time we got to his house, he was gone to get me!!!

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Suave

Not "left behind" per se, but I've gotten lost in department stores, parking lots, and the first time I walked home from school when I was quite young. Scared myself shitless pretty much every time. I thought my parents would never be able to find me and I would die or something.

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rmarshall

Gee, I was abandoned in a garbage can at the Grand Canyon when I was eight. I've been spending my whole life trying to find my parents. I was on a cool radio show with Dennis Miller. I think they're gonna make a movie about my life.

Joe

mokle

I wasn't left... I guess I did the leaving!

When I was 3, my family and I were camping in Calgary near the river, and for whatever reason, I decided to walk from where we were (the park) to our camper (long walk, it was in a parking lot).

Needless to say, my family was hectically searching for me, and they even alerted the park guide/ranger/whatever that I was missing. They thought I had fallen into the river and drowned, lol. So my mom was all crying so my dad took her to the camper to calm her down, and the find little old me playing with some toys on the couch.

My mom has said I've caused her lot's of stress ever since I was born, perhaps she's right

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Mokle
"Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see" -Ali

Squishor

Maybe I just prefer to think that my mother didn't actually forget me...anyhow I spent an awful lot of time sitting and wondering if anybody cared, that's for sure.

mingusfingers

I've always had this fear of being left behind. My parents were (are) chronically late, and I would always think about what would happen to me if they just disappeared on me.

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eribrav

This brings back a bad memory. I must have been 7 years old at the time. Whole family went to the department store. We're walking out towards the car and
I realize my little brother, age 3 is not with us. So what do I do? Right! I think, hey this is cool and I don't say a word.

We get in the car, dad pulls out of the spot and I just burst out laughing. Mom looks back to see what's so funny, and as I'm about to spout it out she realizes my little brother isn't there! We found him in a few seconds by the cashiers so it wasn't a big deal in the end. But it's one of those times where I remember my parents being so angry at me that I was truly scared. What did I know at 7 years?

Pip

That must've hurt! When I was 17 I came home from a hike to find out my parents had bought a new house. Felt really nice to have no input whatsoever about that. I never saw it until we moved in either, and it took me years to stop hating the house.

Flinn

I wasn't ever left behind but once I was on a scouting trip and got seperated from the rest of my group when we went riding inner tubes in some river. I had actually fallen off and lost my tube cut myself up on the shallow rocks, some girl let me ride on her tube back to shore and my group was nowhere in sight. I had to walk for about an hour through the woods to the parking lot where I saw the idiot counselors responsible for letting a 9 y/o kid go through that kind of BS.

guthmund

I was 14 and was coming back from solos competition with a busload of fellow bandmates. The competition didn't end until late afternoon, so we were expected to be on school grounds around 8:00 that night.

To make a long story short, I was the only kid there who didn't have a parent to ride home with. I had several offers for rides, but declined because I knew how mad my mother would be if there was no one to pick up when she got there. Eventually around 10:30, the janitor, who was closing up and leaving, offered to give me a ride home. I barely knew this guy, but, at the time, riding home with a stranger was a helluva lot better choice than hanging around the empty school.

Turns out my mother had to go to work early that night (she worked the night shift) and had left my retrieval in the hands of my step-father. He had gone down to the youth center to play some basketball, met some friends of his and forgotten all about me. When my mother found out she simply said it was good that I 'had found a way home' on my own, but I could tell it bothered her quite a bit that my step-father had screwed up. Not too upset, however, as he lasted another 4 years.

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Carno

I've been forgotten to be picked up from places many times growing up. Never really bothered me. My mom was chronically late, so if I knew she was supposed to pick me up, I expected the wait.

One time that kinda sticks out in my mind is being forgotten at soccer practice. I was 11 or 12 I think. I sat there watching as all the kids left with their parents and the coaches left, and then I walked across the street to Publix. I asked some lady for change, and then I called my house. My sister answered and said that my mom had just left because she finally remembered to pick me up. I just walked across the street and shot some goals until my mom showed up.

ironmaiden7o7

I have never been left behind but I do remember one day I was supposed to pick my nephew up from school and completely forgot and didn't get to the school like 2 hours later. I still feel bad about that and can't get his expressions out of my head. As an adult, being left behind isn't such a big deal to me, I can deal if I were left behind, but as a kids, you are only limited to certain things and it's much tougher.

little_tippler

I guess I must have been about 10 or so when something similar happened to me. The school bus used to leave me on the corner of a street near where this lady who I stayed with in the afternoon was, and one afternoon she wasn't there. So at the next stop these nuns (I was in a school run by nuns at the time) were getting off and they and the bus lady thought it would be a good idea if I got off with them, so I'd be close to where I should be. Then if someone called the school they could tell my mom where I was. It was weird. They were nice to me but I was scared. About an hour later my mom called their house and found me but she was in hysterics thinking I'd been taken.

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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

pinkie

My mom used to forget to pick me up from school when I was only in the 2nd grade all the time. Every time it happened I'd freak out and cry thinking something terrible had happened to her.

At 13, she shipped me off for 18 months to a bootcamp for kids right after my father was killed in a car wreck.

At 15 she did the same thing, but this place was a warehouse for drug abusing teens, even though I had no drug addiction... (Another 18 months)

There are more but this topic makes my side ache...

sapiens

Despite the best efforts of family and friends, I have never been left behind. (Though when the Rapture comes, I might be...)

hambone

I was actually left behind at my high school graduation. We had the whole ceremony and whatnot and then people met in the cafeteria afterwards. Well, my entire family, including my girlfriend (now my wife), all decided to leave then and since I came to the graduation with them, I had no way to get home. So I ended up walking home by myself from the high school.

Once I got home, they were all there partying it up, FOR MY GRADUATION!!!

Needless to say I was pretty pissed and sulked in my room for a while before coming out. Everyone felt really bad afterwards too.

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"Like liquid white from fallen glass,
Nothing to cry over"

stonegrody

I was left behind at Disneyland when I was 8. I was too scared/small to go on the big rollercoasters so the rest of my family would go on them while I waited behind the railing. They must have gotten off when I wasn't paying attention and went on to the next ride. I always did what I was told because I was afraid of my father so I just stood there and waited. A lot of time passed and still no sign of my family. Someone must have noticed because they brought over an employee to ask me questions. I didn't speak english all that well and I was scared out of my mind so I didn't have much useful information. The employee then gave me a big balloon that said "LOST" on it. A while later, I saw one of my brothers running my way and screaming "There you are!". I was crying by that point and was not happy at all. Finally my dad came over and gave me a brutal spanking. As if it was my fault.

In retrospect, is tying a balloon that says "LOST" on it to a lost kid really a good idea? Anyone could have come up and claimed me. Of course, after my butt whooping, I kinda hoped someone else would have. Oh well, I don't think they do that anymore. They probably learned that it was a bad idea pretty quick.

Disneylands slogan is "Happiest place on earth". Well, not that day.

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killeena

When I was in 7th grade, my class went to Quebec for French class via train. When we came back, my Uncle was supposed to pick me up at the train station in Windsor. An hour goes by, and I am the only one still there, besides my poor teacher that of course wasn't going to just leave me there. It wasn't until another hour later that he finally got there. Of course, he never even mentioned it, said sorry or anything.

Me and my girlfriend were just talking about this yesterday, and about how my family is incredibly undependable.

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Freedom would be not to choose between black and white but to abjure such prescribed choices. - Theodor Adorno

clavus

My Dad is a no bullshit kind of guy. When I was 8 or 9 years old, I wandered off when we were at the grocery store. He’d told me a million times not to do so. Even had me paged on the intercom once. But still, I insisted in drifting away when he wasn’t watching me closely.

So there I was, looking at all the plastic crap in the toy section, when it hit me. We had been in the store a long time. An AWFUL long time. I couldn’t remember my dad EVER shopping this long. I wondered where he was.

I searched up and down every aisle before it dawned on me. He left me.

My home was a couple of miles away. (Uphill, I might add; though there was no snow, and I was wearing shoes) So I walked home.

When I got back home, my Dad didn’t say word one about the importance of staying with him at the store. He didn’t need to. I learned my lesson.

God DAMN my dad was a cool dad.

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thinktank

At a glance I read this as "Have you ever been beheaded?"
Onto my story (see also: don’t try this at home):
I'm about 14 years old, and my friends and I have recently discovered that if you mix equal parts pool shock and brake fluid, and wait about a minute, it creates an intense burst of flames that can reach upwards of 20 feet tall, and last about 30 seconds to a minute. As young scientists we got into the only 16 year old's truck, and drove through neighborhoods stealing lawn ornaments to blow up. After a while of searching we found exactly what we were looking for... a ceramic statue of two coyotes howling upwards... it was hollow and the top had a hole in it. We promptly drove it over to a storm sewer, walked about 100 yards into the darkness, and set it up with a nice pickle jar of the pool shock/brake fluid combo inside. It starts to flame up, fire shooting out of the top of the coyote statue, across the ceiling of the storm sewer, and down the walls. About this time we notice that there is a bum sleeping about 5 feet behind our now very-on-fire statue. He starts to get up, and we start to run back down the tunnel... at this exact moment, the ceramic shatters, burning the clothing on quite a few of us. It had rained somewhat recently, and although the tunnel was not full of water, there had been about an 8 foot long pool of water at the end of the tunnel. I ran as hard as i could, closed my eyes and jumped... didn’t make it. Everyone else made it to the truck before me, and they took off. Mud caked on my jeans up to my knees, I had to run from the now very irate bum, and then walk home.

skier

I vaguely remember being left behind once or twice when I was younger, but it's all cloudy. The closest story I can give ya about being lost is this:

When I was around 7 years old my family lived in a very large house. It had all sorts of awesome nooks and crannies to play hide and seek in, which my sister and I played all the time. One day I found the most amazing hiding space ever. I climbed to the top shelf of our walk in pantry and laid down behind this spare fabric my mom used for sewing. My spot was right next to a heating vent and the fabric was comforting, and I soon fell asleep. Needless to say, my sister really had no clue where I was hiding.

I awoke some 9 hours later, climbed down out of my hiding space, and opened the pantry door. Right in front of me stood my mother, who wore the strangest expression I've ever seen someone wear. It was a mixture of shock, puzzlement, confusion, relief, and anger all mixed into one. She dropped the phone (she was calling all the neighbors frantically) and gave me a hug. I didn't get punished though Just told not to fall asleep during hide and seek again.

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