I was all of ten,

The time I ran away, way back when,

I took my little 13 foot plywood boat,

Leaked like a sieve, was summer,

Didn’t even need a coat…

I followed the inter-coastal waterway,

From NJ all the way to North Carolina,

Appropriated my dads gas card,

And three six gallon gas tanks,

An eighteen horse power engine,

And a bag of junk food, the seats were quite hard…

Beached the boat to sleep at night,

Only got as far as I could in the light,

Took a few days but it was for me fun,

Though when I got to my grandparents,

My grandfather spanked me for scaring them,

Then when my dad came down on his boat,

I got another spanking from him,

Then he took the motor & gas tanks off my boat,

And towed it out in the ocean and sank it,

Never again in that one did I ever float…

On the way home, I had to sleep on my stomach,

And I could not sit, had to stand all the way,

And still I had not seen my mom, I must have turned her hair gray…J

© ed J 8/11/08