The Long Walk Home

Late fall or possible Christmas vacation 1980-I think

I really am not sure exactly when this happened I could have been a sophomore or a junior but as I recall it happened over Christmas vacation of 1980. But there are two things that did happen over Christmas vacation of 1980 that makes me think it was maybe even the year before or year after. What did happen is I went to Canada for a Church Youth Group right after Christmas and upon returning I was told by my foster dad that my Grandmother had passed away (real mom's mom) and I had to tell my sister the news. So to get to the story.

Dad was having basketball practice with his girls' team at my highschool gym -he was teaching at a Christian school at the time. Two of his students (sisters) were friends of mine because we had gone to another Christian school together previously. Anyway I went with dad and so did my little brother (foster). My brother and I were very close even though he was almost 5 years younger than me. I was a late bloomer when it came to women's things and he and I always played boys together. Well we were also pretty competitive at sports. At this time he still wasn't to my level but then he shouldn't have been due to the age difference but he was close to as tall as me. I out-weighed him by 30 lbs though. I never ever was easy on him and made him work for every score whether it was b-ball or soccer or wiffle ball. In the end I think this helped him a lot because he knew when he finally did win that I didn't give it to him. That is just my philosophy. Well I was going in for a lay-up and my brother tried to block me and he got knocked down. Dad was furious with me and yelled at me in front of everyone. After practice was over my brother went to a friend's house or something and I was in the car with dad going home. We got about three blocks from the school and dad backhanded me and told me he should just let me walk home. I said fine I will. He stopped the car and told me to get out so I did.

Well it was probably 15 miles to get home from where I was and it was around 5 in the afternoon. I had to walk by a cemetary (it was dark this time of year early) and I walked the country (less traffic) way because there was no foot traffic space on the main bridge that crossed a major river in our area. Well I think I got home right around 8 or 8:30 and the first thing I hear is that I need to call my social worker and tell her I am home. They told me they had called her about 20 minutes before and told her I wasn't home yet. They didn't seem to tell her the story that Dad had told me to walk home. If they had she probably would have realized that it was no surprise I hadn't arrived home - they essentially reported that I ran away.

I don't know why I wrote about this but I guess it was just the nastiness and the problem they seemed to have with being truthful. I guess they might have been in trouble if the truth was found out and something bad had happened to me so they were trying to cover their asses. Well God was watching out for me that night like He has on so many other nights and I arrived home safe. Writing this in some ways has made me more angry because I seemed focused on the unexcusable behavior of the adults who were supposed to be showing me love and compassion and affection and all I got was what a rotten kid I was and a braggart and grumbled all the time. I really feel these 10 years shaped my life so drastically and has made me a very bitter person with still a lot of anger - it is these stories that have shaped my personality I believe.