No, I was never a three-year-old runaway

Intrepid Ms. Fluffster, ignoring the camera, at the cottage with her family

According to Fluffster family lore, I ran away from home when I was three.

It’s time to set the record straight: I didn’t run away. In fact, I believed my family had gone off to the cottage without me, and I had to catch up to them.

When I was three, going on four, we lived in a house with a small back yard in the heart of Toronto. Getting out of the city in the summer was a Big Deal. So it was with excitement that I heard my parents planning another trip to the cottage where we’d spent an exciting vacation the previous summer. For weeks, I pestered them: “Are we going today?” The answer was always no, not yet.

One morning, still in my pyjamas, I was next door playing on the neighbour’s swing set, equipment we didn’t have in our back yard. My mom had always encouraged us to play outside, so I was usually either in our yard or the neighbour’s. That neighbour kept an eye on me from her kitchen window whenever I showed up in her yard while her own kids were at school. Her swing set drew me there, but I often stuck around hoping to taste-test her fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies!

I didn’t pay much attention to which family members were still in my house when I scampered outside after breakfast. An adult would always show up if I needed one.

When I’d had enough of the swing and no cookies had appeared, it was time to find out what was for lunch at home. I walked into the house and called out. Nobody answered. I wandered around downstairs. Nobody there. Not old enough to know the difference between weekends and weekdays, it didn’t occur to me that my dad was at work and my brothers at school. Oma (my Dutch grandmother) was upstairs in her bedroom but didn’t hear me calling, and my mom was out grocery shopping.

In my mind, the empty house meant that everyone must have left for the cottage without me! I wasn’t upset, but I had to catch up with them.

Out I went, still in my pyjamas, but not before picking up my new change purse with two pennies in it (my mom always took her purse whenever she went out). That bright red change purse, a gift from Oma, had one side that was clear plastic so I could always see how rich I was.

After about two hours, I’d wandered at least three and a half kilometres from home when a family finally stopped me near Runnymede subway station. A pre-schooler in her pyjamas walking along busy Toronto streets had to attract attention sooner or later, even in the late ‘50s when free-range parenting was the norm.

Google Maps screenshot of the most direct route from our house to Runnymede Station; I don’t recall the exact route I took.

The mom of the family opened the passenger door of their car, asked where I was going, and offered me a ride. Climbing onto her lap, I said I was going to the cottage, and proudly showed off my change purse. They drove up to the first police car they came across, and a policeman took me home. At three, I hadn’t yet learned about stranger danger. But my parents had taught me to memorize my address and telephone number, which I proudly recited to anyone who asked for it.

Exactly what happened after I got home, other than some uncomfortably tight hugs from my relieved mom and Oma, is blurred in my memory. But I clearly remember getting a lollipop from the policeman on the way home. That’s what really mattered.