The Joy of Escape

A couple of years later, when I was about eight or nine, I was still following my older brother around like a puppy (see Joy of the Tomboy) and he seemed to have got into some altercation with some boys I didn’t recognize and they didn’t seem to be local.
There was also something very serious and grown up about them. They seemed much older than us. They were after my brother for some reason and were not happy. I’m not sure what he’d done, or if he’d done anything or why they were so angry. When I looked around, my brother was gone from my side, he’d disappeared and I was left with five menacing boys, who, after being unable to find my brother, set their sights on me instead and were glowering darkly at me as one force. One of them said ‘That’s his sister.’ Another ordered, in a sinister whisper, while never taking his eyes from mine, ‘Get her.’
My intuitive and instinctive senses told me I was in danger. I don’t think I even waited for them to start running, I was already off down the hill and had passed the park by the time they started coming after me. The thing that sticks in my mind the most is the speed I seemed to be running. I was running like the wind but I could hear them so close behind me, I could hear their feet pounding on
the concrete flags, their flailing arms and hands flicking and brushing against mine as they ran. I could feel their breath on my neck. The blood was pounding in my head. My heart was thumping as if it would burst. I knew I could not let them get me. The entrance to the park was about two hundred yards from my
home. I didn’t have that far to go, so I suppose it was a quick spurt kind of thing. I don’t think I’ve ever ran like that before or since. I sped up the path to my house, got to the front door and when I looked back, the boys had done a U-turn and were gone. I’d outran all five boys. I’d reached a place where they couldn’t
follow. I’d reached sanctuary. I felt such relief. The joy of escape I’ll never forget. Whatever they were going to do, I don’t want to know and I’m glad I didn’t find out because I ran for my life. I’d been in survival mode. It’s not often we escape by the skin of our teeth. It seems that is one of those things you only see in movies and there were so many times before then and after then when I
didn’t escape, or couldn’t escape and that seems to be most people’s reality. But this was one time, just this one wonderful time, I did escape and because of that it really sticks in my memory. And we need to remember those times when we did escape and celebrate them. Needless to say, that was the moment I
stopped following my big brother around.