Did you ever get lost as a child?

I remember two occasions....once when I was lost and another when I felt lost. I felt lost when my Mum and Dad went to a Home Show at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. They had a playground for children and I thought it would be fun so they left me there, presumably to enjoy the show without a four year old in tow. I remember realizing that they had gone and feeling abandoned and very frightened.

I cried and cried and the lady who was supervising the kids took me back somewhere and gave me a banana! Mum & Dad showed up eventually and it was such a relief to see them. The time I was really lost, was again when I was small in Glasgow. I was with Mum, it was before my brother was born, and we were waiting in a queue at the baker's in Sinclair Drive.

It was just post war and queues for everything ( or sometimes nothing) were a fact of life. I distinctly remember feeling bored with waiting, Mum must have been chatting I think, because I tool off and went down some stairs behind the shop and all I remember after that was waliking along a road by myself past a wire fence and past the synagogue and meeting a neighbour who took my home. I remember my Mum's emotion when we got back to our flat... I don't think I was particularly worried.....

Poor Mum must have been distraught when I went missing and it was just luck that I met a neighbour, who knows where i would have ended up. I think about that often,the absolute worst moment in a mother's life when her child goes missing, just imagine me doing that to her, quite deliberately.....