This is horrible, and I don't think about it as often as I should, but when I was a kid, I was kind of fucked up. I had ADD and was on a bunch of different medications . I got bullied alot in the 6th grade in Las vegas, Nevada (fucking carol m johnston middle school). So one day I ran away. I was unhappy at home let alone at school, so I took a city bus into the older part of the strip, and then closer to the Naked City area and I spent the day wandering around. I don't remember having that great of a plan, I was a pretty akward little kid so I though about dumb shit like sneaking onto a plane at mccarran or crashing in an abandoned building downtown, things that would really get me fucked up thinking back as an adult. I distinctly remember being on a bus and talking to people telling them I was running away. Two of them said some things that as an adult I know could have been (definitely were) about human trafficking things like ,"oh hey freddie, you hear this kid? You could put him to work on your corner" and an old lady overheard them, and she started yelling at me about my parents being worried sick and how she was going to call the cops, so I told her I was lying about running away and my family was just visiting and I hurriedly got off at the next stop. I wandered into a 7-11, Some dude bought me a soda and I asked him If I could crash on the floor at his place (can you imagine some nerdy white 6th grader asking you if he could crash at your place?) And he said that was most definitely not alright. So I wandered the strip some more, visited the lions at the MGM, I think I nicked a book or something from a shop, and finally I found myself wandering around outside in the dark on the strip at night. It was late. I was cold and hungry, a bunch of dudes were passing out those nude girl calling cards everywhere, and I had had enough. I was way too scared to call my parents and ask them to come pick me up, so I walked into a carls jr, asked to borrow their phone, and I called the cops. They came and found me, they called my mom, she came and picked me up, I got in a bunch of trouble but I got home safe. There were so many moments when I could have been hurt or abducted on that crazy trip, and I was such a selfish brat. 3 years later my friend Ali Otremba was raped, stabbed 17 times, and set on fire in an empty lot near where we lived while she was walking home from grabbing a schoolbook, by the same kind of person who I would have interacted with at least a hundred times on my excursion in tbe seedy side of Las vegas. That guy got the death penalty, and I think a the time about how lucky I was that I didn't get gurt by someone that horrible for being a dumb fucking kid. I think about that alot and how worried my parents must have been, and I hurt for them. We take alot of shit for granted, because as a rule, kids are fucking stupid.