I did a couple of times. Once when I was about 3, my family went to Busch Gardens in Williamsberg, Virginia (a big amusement park, think Six Flags or Universal Studios). My mom thought my aunt was watching me and my aunt thought my mom was. I think they eventually found me with a security guard or something. I don’t really remember it. Also, once when I was 6 or 7, my parents took a visitor to some museum. I’d been there before and we usually took the stairs to get to the second floor, so after getting bored with whatever we were looking at, I waited for them in the stairwell. My sister was with me, but she left after a while, without telling me that they decided to take the elevator instead. When I realized they weren’t coming, I wandered my way over to the front desk and embarrassedly told the woman there I was lost (like I had been taught in kindergarten) but my dad came up right after that. I had a box of chocolate-covered almonds with me that the woman at the desk told me I wasn’t allowed to eat inside. Hrrmph.
Once, when I was about 3, my mom took me to a local department store (this was when there were still local department stores) to go shopping. I somehow got away from her and wandered up into the mezzanine area (this was when there were still mezzanines in department stores…geez, I’m dating myself here!). The interesting thing was that I more or less watched from behind the rail pillars on the mezzanine as my mom and the floor personnel got increasingly frantic to find something (couldn’t be ME, right? I mean, I knew exactly where I was…). Boy, did I get in trouble when they found me!
Once when I was four or five I was shopping with my mom in a big department store…I got side-tracked in the toy department and assumed she’d stop when I did, so when I was finally done pushing all the buttons and such I looked up and she was nowhere to be found. I believe I walked around crying until one of the store personnel found me and took me to the customer service desk. They called my mom, who was frantic by that time.
It’s really scary when you’re little and you can’t even find your way around a store by yourself and all of a sudden there’s nobody to help you do it.
There’s also the problem that the first thing many little lost kids will do is RUN. My mum told me never to run if I got lost, but I did and I did. Luckily I only got a few yards before I saw her.
I never got lost.
My family was just looking at things that I had no interest in…and I found other things more interesting.
Like when we were in Tijuana when I was three. I have no idea what my family did, but I found and kept company with a local woman who did not speak english and I spoke no spanish. Apparently, we got along famously for three hours before my mom came along in a panic.
I am the same way to this day.
Mr. Ujest can always find me in either a book store or a clearance rack in the back of the store.
I don’t remember ever getting lost myself, but I do remember my mother getting lost once or twice in a department store when I was small. 
I had this exact same experience except when someone asked me for my mother’s name, I blanked out and could only tell them she was wearing lipstick. They managed to find her anyway.
Smack in the middle of O’Hare airport, age 4. We’d had dinner in one of the concourse restaurants when Grandma’s plane was delayed coming in from Arizona. Mom and Dad took turns walking into the hallway to look for flight info. At some point, they decided to separate, and each thought I was with the other. Apparently, they finally got back together nearly two hours later only to discover that I was with neither. I’m told I was found in the restaurant bar, helping the bartender garnish drinks.
Another story, not me but my brother…
When he was three or four he wandered off in the mall while my mom was busy with me and my sister. Nobody realized he wasn’t with us until we were all in the car on the way home.
We walked back into the mall to find him wandering around totally unfazed. He was always a laid back kid, but jeez.
My entire family except for a small child managed to get lost once. When I was nine, my family drove up Mt. Cadillac (in Acadia National Park, in Maine) in a very thick fog. Amazed at the pea soup outside, my parents, sister, and a friend all went out wandering in the cloud, but my six-year-old brother was scared of it and stayed in the car. Ten minutes later, we had no idea where we were relative to the car, because you could only see about ten feet in front of you. My brother freaked out because we’d been gone for so long, so he hopped into the front seat and started honking the horn long and loud. The car turned out to be about 50 yards away, and we were all kind of embarrassed to have lost it.
Two years later, my four year old sister got separated from the rest of the family on top of the same mountain; she sensibly found a park ranger, who helped her find the family car in the parking lot. My family and Cadillac Mountain apparently don’t mix well.
I’ve never been lost, but my parents have wandered off from time to time. The most memorable time was at the Washington Monument, when I was 9 or 10 or so. I spent several hours wandering the Mall before I finally located them. Boy was I pissed.
My brother’s story is juicier. At 6 he got lost somewhere in Boston, was frightened and crying, when a very nice older man asked him what’s wrong and offered to help. They were just about to get on the subway when our mom saw him and started screaming his name. By the time she got to him, the very nice older man had vanished into the crowd. I’d never heard this story until recently, at a family gathering when he dropped it into conversation in his typically matter-of-fact manner – I’m like, “Gee, you’re awfully nonchalant about almost getting KIDNAPPED and RAPED!!” Sheesh! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
I wasn’t lost.
Really I was not lost.
There is a little camping/hiking state park in Oklahoma called Turner Falls.
My eigth grade class took an end of the year trip there. Later that summer some lots of relatives visited the extended family went down there in a large group. Now Turner Falls is in the “mountainous” part of Oklahoma. The first area of the park has a large swimming area. This area is fed by a stream. Now if you follow the stream, perhaps on the ROAD that goes along side it. You would come to a nice waterfall where there is a second swiming area. BTW the name of the waterfall is TURNER FALLS.
So…
Being the youngest and the most uncool, and the brother that I usually do stuff with has ditched me to hang with the older cousins, I’m pretty much on my own. But since I’ve been to the park before, I head up to the falls. ON THE WAY I PASSED MY SISTER AND OUR COUSIN AND I TOLD THEM WHERE I WAS GOING.
Apparently, my mother noticed that I was not visible in swiming area number one. So, obviously, I must have drowned. The two life guards have emptied out the swiming area and everyone is ringing the place looking for my dead body while thery dive down looking for me. After about an HOUR of this, my uncle comes up to swiming area number two and waves me in. I get out of the water and we just get in the back of the state troopers car to ride back to swiming area number one. (neitehr of them told me I was believed to be dead.) I get out of the car and I learned then how Jesus felt when he met the women on the road on easter sunday. My mom is hysterical and it takes about 10 minutes for them to explain why everyone thought I was dead.
But again, I was not lost.
I was left, not lost. My mom, herding her children and a little league team, miscounted. It wasn’t until she unloaded the station wagon an hour later that she asked, “Where’s DeVena?” I was back at the ball park with the umpires and the local cops, eating hot dogs. I was 4.
I don’t think it really counts, but I once lost myself in a pecan orchard. My family had gone out to my grandmother’s neighbor, who had a large orchard, to pick nuts. I lost sight of everyone, so there I was, lost in a huge forest and alone. Naturally, I freaked out and ran around screaming, and people appeared from a couple rows over to save me. I was about 4 years old, and I still remember how terrifying it was.
More or less. I’ve been brought up in the countryside, and I got lost a number of times in the woods. I always eventually found my way back home though (except once when I ended up in a village I didn’t know and was brought back by a stranger who turned up to be a distant relative.
However, I was once forgotten. I wasn’t a kid, though, but a young teen (13 yo or so), in summer camp in England. We were heading in a bus to Nottingham, it stopped at a gas station, and the bus left while I was in the bathrooms. I spoke very few english, and I couldn’t remember the name of the place where our group was staying. The station attendant and his wife were very kind, and tried to find out what to do with me.
Eventually, towards the end of the day, someone from some local authority somehow in charge of foreign youth groups (maybe a youth protection service, I wouldn’t know) came, found out where I was coming from and picked me up, before anybody noticed I was missing. Since my english skills were so poor, I didn’t dare to use it much, and when this man asked me various questions I pretended to be very tired and to need sleep so I wouldn’t have to speak english.
Finding the whole situation suspicious, he apparently enquired about the summer camp, and gathered various gossips from our british cook and the population of the village. The events recounted to him, though having a kernel of truth were widely exagerated (nothing serious had happened) , and were exaggerated again when reported to the organism in charge of the summer camp, and again to our parents who were all contacted. From the informations they got, our 13 yo asses were having wild orgies, were getting drunk at the local pub, wandered at night around the village in various state of undress and chased herds of cows down the village’s streets.
The summer camp was closed as a result.
Does being left in the care of strangers for a number of days count?
My grandmother was bi-polar. Every spring she would go to the local jewelry store, buy something expensive on credit (this was before credit cards. It was store credit) then go pawn it.She’d then pick up whatever kid was youngest, and run away from home.
Since I lived with them I qualified as youngest and away we went. I wasn’t yet 3. The first place we went was to the house they had lived in prior to buying the one I was born in.
She boldly knocked on the door and waited … and waited… We sat on the porch for years, that morning.
Finally, the woman from the next house came over and asked what was going on. She said the people that lived ther were on vacation for the next 2 weeks.
Nana told her some amazing story about how the woman who lived there was her long lost best friend. They hadn’t seen one another or spoken in 15 years. (the truth was, her only knowledge of these people was during the sale of the house.) Then she told the woman that her husband had thrown her out on the street with her poor little daughter(!?!) and that we had no money, no bed to lay our tired heads, and worst of all, no roof to protect us from the rain.
The woman was, as expected, moved by “our” sad lot, so asked if we would do her the honor of allowing her to feed and house us until we could get back on our feet.
Nana graciously accepted.
I was warehoused in the children’s room where 2 girls and one boy all older than me, resided.
Because I talked early and alot, they let me play with them, I seemed older.
It seemed like we played all day, and maybe we did, because the woman called us to dinner.
Much to my surprise, Nana wasn’t at the table, or in the bathroom or the living room, or the porch. I couldn’t think of a thing to do but cry. I’d been given away without a by-your-leave.
I stayed there for a few or several days. Finally, I was so home sick I asked if I could call my daddy. (I called my grandfather “Daddy”) I knew my telephone number because it was my birthday (and what to me, was a nonsense word: “Ulrick” 0624
The woman was very upset for having been lied to.
Anyway, I called home, and my grandfather talked to the woman, assuring her he hadn’t turned us out with nothing. In about an hour, he came to pick me up.
I never found out where Nana went during the days I was there. She came home a week or so after I did.
Nothing was ever said. It was as though I’d dreamed the whole thing.
Years later, my aunt told me her “run away story.” It wasn’t much different than mine, except she didn’t get let in the care of strangers.
I never had the nerve to Nana if she would have come to get me, or if, she had, indeed, given me away to strangers.
I was always getting lost as a kid. My parents eventually learned to love the kiddie leash and kept me on it at all times.
Then when it came to driving the leash was infeasible for obvious reasons, but the cell phone allowed me to call my parents every time I got lost (and it was quite often).
I got lost in the airport in Beruit, Lebanon. Sheesh, that’s a hell of a place to get lost as a kid! My mom still gets the shakes over that one.
I lost my daughter once, at home. We lived way out in the country, and even though she was only three she was used to playing outside by herself and going into the hayfield. One day, I had been busy unpacking groceries and couldn’t locate her inside the house, so I went outside and called for her. No answer. I looked at the dog, who was her constant companion. The dog is on the porch. I search the house again. Nothing. I search outside again. Nothing. I’m starting to panic at this point and I go back in to call the Sheriff’s Department. As I pass her bedroom I see the sole of a tiny shoe sticking out from under a lumpy blanket on the floor. There she was, sound asleep. The amazing part of this story is that was probably the only voluntary nap she ever took in her life, until her teenage years.
I once came in from playing in the yard and went to my room and took a nap. No one saw me come in. Somehow, I was in a spot where my mom couldn’t see me when she came up to check. She wound up starting a massive neighborhood search for me.
I was a toddler, not even 2-years-old, still in diapers. I remember the incident quite clearly, despite my age. My mom dropped me off at the babysitter’s house and left for work. I stayed up late eating corn chips with the babysitter’s daughter and then we went to bed. Sometime in the night I woke up and decided to find my mother. I got out of bed, opened the front door (which was locked. We never did figure out how I got it open) and took off down the street.
A cop is driving along a couple of blocks away when he spies a toddler, naked but for a diaper, walking in someone’s front yard. I remember the bright lights on his car. He took me to the police station, and gave me a Coke and a chocolate bar. I told them what my first name was and that my mommy was at the hotel where she worked. They called my mom, who was absolutely hysterical.
Only the first example of my wandering foot!