Something I still think about at least once a week, probably more now that I have my own child. For context, my mum left when I was 7 and my brother was 9 and my dad had full time care of both of us. When I was about 8, my dad took us to this annual over-stock sale of CDs. It was huge and most albums were about $5 instead of $20-30. I don't know why I did it, but I started damaging CDs. Scratching them, rubbing them on the ground, spitting on them. I don't know why. My brother was doing it too. My dad caught us and quickly kicked us out of the store. He was yelling at us all the way back to the car. He then told me to sit on the fence beside the car. He put my brother in the car and he told me I wasn't coming home with them. He got in the car, started it and started to drive. I just sat there and cried. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know why I was the only one being punished. I thought I was a street kid. I'm not sure how far he drove. I don't remember if he drove around the block, or just 20 metres and stopped, but he came back almost immediately and told me to get in the car. He then questioned me just repeating, "What were you going to do if I didn't come back" I was just crying and saying, "I don't know." He repeated the question a lot.

I still don't know what the lesson was meant to be. I don't know if he knew. I'm in my early 30s now and we've never spoken about it. It still makes me sad whenever I think about it. I've never been that scared in my life before or since. I truly thought he'd abandoned me and I was going to live out my life on the streets of my city.