Darragh had a very sweet post yesterday about elopement.
I once left home.
I didn’t elope.
I accidently split my little brother’s head open with a garden hoe.
While mammy took him to Temple Street Children’s Hospital, in Dublin; I packed my bag and went next door and asked our neighbour if I could live in her house! She has now moved on to the next life and I am sure she is still laughing!
That same little brother got fed up with living at home, and who could blame him? He announced one day that he was running away, when asked where he would go; he said “I’m going to get the 72 Bus!”
Very ambitious family we were…. The 72 bus only went to Oxmantown Road.
He did eventually move away. He made sure the hoe could not reach him.
Little brother now lives in Melbourne, Australia!
Wow! He really went far to get away from you and that hoe.
I ran away from home once. I think I’m still running.
I never ever ran away, either from home or school. Can’t think why as they were both pretty problematic. I must have been a very timid child. Mind you, my alternative tactic of wild rebellion on all fronts could get my father pretty steamed up.
I didn’t run away from home but I remember one wintery Saturday morning just after ‘Anything Goes’ had fininshed on RTE. I was about 6 and my brother was 4 and we were playing out in the garden.
He was annoying me so I picked up an empty paint can and threw it at him. It hit him square in the forehead and he collapsed in a heap, unconcious with blood streaming down his head.
I can still remember walking into the kitched and my mother saying to me, “where is your brother?” and I replying, “He’s dead.”
And then came the scream as she looked out the garden to see him panned out on the grass! He was just coming around but he did have to get a few stitches in his forehead.
But wouldn’t he have reached Kildare Street if he had gone the other way? Once he’d reached there, the sky would have been the limit; the next stop would be the Aras.
There’d be a lot of scope for a man swinging a hoe in Kildare Street at the moment – he might crack some useful skulls.
The things we do to and had done to us by our siblings could probably fill a thousand volumes: My sister had osteomyelitis as a toddler. Any time we had an argument she’d run in clutching an arm screaming that I’d hit her “on my bad arm”. I still do not know which arm was the affected one!
Got my own back once…I captured the “cowboy” gagged and tied her to the washing prop in the middle of the field next door! Then I disappeared! I was missing for about half an hour!
My Grandmother , as the oldest of her siblings, used to sympathise with me as she always got into trouble for her brother’s mischief and mistakes….. On top of that she was not allowed to whistle, “Ethel, young ladies do not whistle.”
Oh, Magpie is so right. The Nuns at my school used to tell us that when ladies whistled the Blessed Mother cried. Where did they think up that sh*t?
They sincerely had too much time on their hands; nice and snug and safe in the convent when all the rest of us were scratching for an existence during the height of the depression. They had a warning for every contingency….NOTHING you did went unnoticed by even the most obscure Saint.
I still live in fear that St.Simon Stock (The least known saint in Heaven) will find out that I ate a hot dog one friday at Woolworth’s …
I tossed my brother behind the sofa, walked out, closed the door and left him howling with his sprained arm. He had to be taken to the hospital.
I tried to stifle his non-stop crying after he came home from the hospital as a newborn with a pillow.
I pushed him off a wall into a frozen stream and he was covered in ice and couldn’t stop shivering.
I always told my parents that HE DID IT when I was in trouble.
We are the best of friends today.
He is very forgiving.
I don’t deserve it.
XO
WWW
Leaving home?
I’m running away…
I’m all packed! 😀
@Darren – Nah! we are good pals and he only emigrated when Elly arrived! I thik we can blame her. 😆
@Nick – Perhaps books took you away from the problems for awhile!
@Robert – Does your brother talk to you now?
@Ian – I think he pulled the number out of his head for that bus. A few years later and that whole area played a part in our lives when daddy spent almost a year in the Richmond Hospital.
@Magpie – Snap my sister developed osteomyelitis in her leg during her school days.
@Nancy – I think we were at the same school! If we looked in a mirror too long we would see the devil!
@WWW – And I thought you were a nice person! 🙄
I ran away several times but always went back home at the end of the day. I reckon every kid thinks about running away. The grass is always greener on the other side. 🙂
Mental Note: Stay away from Grannymar’s hoe. 🙂
@Steph – The system eat my answer to your comment 🙁
Don’t go we would miss you!
JD – The hoe is well gone, my father saw to that. 😀
And I thought my granddaughters were bad. Wow, it’s amazing that Wisewoman’s brother survived. He is forgiving.
He didn’t have to go THAT far, did he? LOL
I escaped into books? That’s very perceptive of you, I never thought of that. You’re probably right.
@Darlene – I think that WWW’s brother is a candidate for sainthood!
@Judy – I think love might have had something to do with his eventual move.
@Nick – Alas reading in our house as I grew up was for information and not pleasure. Even now it takes me months if not a year to read a book!
I packed my bags once in preparation of leaving home then asked my mother to drive me. “Where are you going?” she asked “I’m leaving home and need you to drive me to Nana’s” Needless to say, she was less than cooperative.
Baino,
I think you both would have had questions to answer at your Nana’s!