seanherman

Remember when you were a kid and you were stay up late, defying the conventions of what was law of your world, the dreaded bed time. I didn't necessarily have a family that particularly cared that I was staying up late, so I suppose the stigma was somewhat self imposed.
Any how, I remember staying up, waiting a good hour after the parents bedroom door had closed, and deciding to make my slip. I imagine that this is what they felt like in Shawshank Redemption, that point at the end of the movie, when Andy decides to make his run for it, and eventually, after climbing through fields of fecal excrement, falls into the creek, stands up and lets the rain fall on his face. The rain of freedom.
Ok, maybe my sneaking out was nothing like this, but in my over dramatic head, it had many similarities. I would quietly wait until I knew no one was going to suddenly wake up, and start to shimmy the window. Ever so slightly, trying my damnedest to not make any noise, because window's always squeak when you don't want them to. Once the window was all the way open, the next step was popping the screen out. Now, eventually I had done this so many times that the screen simply fell out, no problem. But those first few times took quite a bit of effort for my small hands to make happen. After some pinched fingers and bent back nails, it would finally happen. This was my escape, the house was my Shawshank.
Every time, without fail, I felt exactly the same with those first few solid steps, they were steps of freedom. For that short time, I was completely free. I heard every sound every animal made, and it sounded new and exciting. The cool air blowing on my face, the feeling of the dew on my feet, already collecting for the evening, it was always exhilarating.
Now, it mind sound as though my home was an oppressive prison that I felt I needed to break out of, which is not true. To be honest, they wouldn't have cared if I wanted to go out. If I would have asked, they probably would have let me go out at any time. Once, on one of these escape outings, I was picked up by police. My small town had a curfew, and there was no way to try to explain away why you were skateboarding down the street at 3 in the morning. I thought to myself, "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm being brought home by a cop. I am now a common criminal, I have begun my life of crime. Today this, tomorrow bank robbery, what next, murder?" Ok, so I was indeed quite over dramatic, a trait many would say I still possess today. I remember the officer knocking at the door, my hands trembling, sweating uncontrollably, hoping that maybe they didn't hear his knock and I could convince to let me sleep on the porch. Oh, but to my avail, she heard the knock. I could have created small bombs in the living room, set them off at 30 second increments, and she would hear nothing. In fact, I did just that very thing at one point. The slight knock at the door at 3 in the morning, and suddenly she's got the ears of a trained navy seal. When she opened the door I thought, "This is it, I'm going to be sent off to work with the chain gang". As I had my hands out, eyes closed, ready for the officer to handcuff me, he said, "Miss, is this your son?" To which she looked me up and down, evidently trying to make sure I was not an impostor, maybe a pod person, and she said, "Yes sir, that is". "Then I'll let you take care of this", he said, and headed back to the car. My eyes were still closed when she said, "Well, get to bed." And that was that. No jail time served, no lashing, no punishment, nothing.
So why then did I focus so much on the freedom I felt when I took that first step when sneaking out? I always wondered this. I would run through the neighborhood, like it was the scene from an apocalyptic zombie movie, the world was in ruins, and I was the last one left standing. Running through, I imagined myself pillaging through all the neighbors things that had been left. Eating all the fancy food we could never afford, watching all the big screen tv's I had never seen, and playing all the game systems that I only heard about in school.
Of course I never really did any of this, I usually just walked around the neighborhood, skateboarding on the nights where I felt more daring. I'd walk the familiar circle, the circle that looked completely different and new at night. Everything was a new adventure, now that I couldn't tell exactly what it was. The wild world of imagination would take over, and everything became much bigger, scarier, and mythical than ever before. The neighborhood became a frontier that I had to conquer, or at least experience. Haunted houses, vampires, and werewolves flooded the streets as I walked past.

I ran this same gamut many a night. It would usually end with me slowly heading back in the direction of my house, hopeing that my step dad didn't happen to pop his head out the door while letting a cat out in the middle of the night. If it was to happen, I would imagine myself trying to blend in with my surroundings like a chameleon, becoming one with my surroundings, completely out of sight of the guard at the house. But this never happened, so I never had to use my chameleon mutant ability, but one day.
Every so slowly I would lift the window, nudge by nudge, trying not to make a sound. It would especially feel as a huge defeat to be caught going back into the house instead of leaving. It would be like getting caught trying to return something you had stolen from the store because of your conscience getting the best of you. What do you say, "I'm trying to do the right thing, I'm giving it back. No harm, no foul. Look away and we'll act like this never happened." Being caught sneaking back in would be like when your the last one picked for the kickball team. You know its for a good reason, not just because of your freakishly short height, but also because of your lack of ability.
After returning the screen back to it's normal resting place, and ever so slowly closing the window, nudge by nudge, as to not make a sound, I would lay my head down on my pillow with the feeling of victory. I had conquered the night, I had done what I wanted to do, and not what someone else wanted. I was on my schedule, and no one else's. I imagined that this is what adult hood was like. Oh the beautiful naivety of childhood.
So, all that being said, I had that familiar feeling again last night. That feeling of, "I've got to get out of here." I had just spent the evening straightening up the house, all the new furniture I had just acquired from a guy down the street who was moving out and had to get rid of everything. This was quite convenient for me, considering I owned absolutely nothing. So I was doing the ever so masculine thing of arranging and decorating my new living space. I had also just finished answering the usual load of emails. Then, from the pit of my stomach, that old feeling came back. "I've got to get out of here."
When I used to sneak out as a kid I had a routine. Unfortunately, dealing with mild OCD, many things in my life have to be routine. But the routine began with me changing clothes. After all, you can't conquer the night in your jammies, what would they think? The vampires and ghosts would just laugh. I always thought I'd be slick and wear all black, then they would never see me. So tonight, I found myself doing the same thing. It was unseasonably cold, so I had to change clothes to accommodate. As I put on my hat and gloves, I looked in the mirror and realized I was wearing all black again, my old uniform, my super hero suit if you will. With that glance at myself I knew I had to get out of there. The night was waiting, and I needed to be there.
I live alone mind you, no one to worry about, yet I felt it was important that I be as quiet as possible, because I don't want to wake anyone up that might catch me. So I quietly walked down my stairs, grabbed my bike, and made a break for the door. I didn't know where I was going, but I just had to go. The ex girlfriend's cat was sitting at the door. I am taking care of it for the time being, until she can come get him. Now he and I have conversations. When she was here, he really didn't want to have much to do with me, but now, now he wants to be like that old Tom Hanks show Bosom Buddies. I'm sure that if that little creature had opposable thumbs, he'd be trying to get me to cross dress with him so we could get all the sorority girls by working it from the inside. Then we would have little morals at the end of every episode. Hopefully I would go on to be Tom Hanks, and not the other guy. But, most likely, the cat would have that distinction. So he walked me to the road. We talked about many things, politics, religion, the failure of capitalism, and the coming revolution. Cats love revolution. They really do, anything to throw a wrench in the system, a cat will be down for. Well, maybe we didn't communicate verbally about all these things, but he did follow me, running up every stair, taking short cuts through the bushes, and eventually seeing me to the curb. I saw him off, gave him a proper handshake, and told him to make sure to take care of himself, and what little things I have, if I happen to not return. And then, I was off. I looked back and could see his tail, waving in the distance, saying good bye. God, I'm still very much over dramatic, forgive me.
So I rode, with no destination in mind. I just wanted the adventure. It's funny, when you tell people you are going on an adventure, they ask, "well where are you going?". This is odd to me, because adventure isn't really a noun, it's not a place. One doesn't say, "I'm going to adventure, it's gonna be crazy!" Now I understand where they are coming from, and they aren't wrong for it. I'm not going to put a "holier than thou" context on this thought. It's more of a sidetracked thought that has now gone terribly wrong. But let's just say that the act of adventure is far greater than the effect, like many things in life. Love is a good example of this.
Now where was I? Oh yeah, the adventure. The adventure is the ride, walk, whatever. Why do we ever need places to go, we just need to go. For me, the greatest times I ever had was in just going, having no clue where I was going to end up, or why. So, with that on my mind, I rode. I rode past the water front, watched the water in bay, steadily moving barges going out to the gulf. Looking in the barge, you could faintly see them watching a tv. I wonder what they are watching? Maybe it was Titanic, and he's just waiting on his Rose, or Leo diCaprio, whatever floats your boat (yeah, that pun was horrible, and completely on accident), to come rescue him of this boring life.
So I continued down, turning at Fort Conde, looking at all the mile signs that show how close, or far, very obscure places in the world are from us here in Mobile, Alabama. Cuba, 900 miles, that's kinda close. Mobile to Paris, some 3000 miles, not so close. No matter what the signs said, everything felt a lifetime away. I rode into the old Fort Conde village, poking my head into an abandoned house that I probably shouldn't have. After hearing some russell and bussell, I decided I didn't want to know what was in there moving, and they probably didn't want to know me.
I've been in that situation before, from both sides. Nothing in more annoying or scaring than some kid poking his head in when you're trying to sleep. So I continued home.
It wasn't until then that I really thought about what I was doing. I was essentially "sneaking out" and taking over the night again. But this doesn't make sense, I'm an adult, adult's don't need to sneak out, we don't have parents to answer to, for the most part. I especially don't have a 9-5 job, don't really have to get up early, don't have a boss, and don't deal with anyone over my head or shoulder. So why do I still feel the constant need for sneaking out and creating this adventure?
One word, freedom. We long for it. Think about what everyone always says that they want, to be free. Free of stress, free of debt, free of hunger, free of work, free. We long for that freedom, and here's the anarcho-kicker, because we are in a system that doesn't work. The machine is bleeding to death, and we are all stuck in it. We become stuck in our routine lives. We wake up at a set time, and usually head to another building, where we will be working for the day. We throw ourselves head long into what we are doing, and usually lose whatever track of a day we had. We might go out for lunch, and then back to the building. We then head home to "relax", which usually entails sitting in front of the TV, living someone else's reality, and eating a processed dinner. I know, cause I do it all the time. We forget that this isn't living, this isn't what we are here to do. We are not here to work, to pay taxes, or to create product. We are not here to buy their clothes, soap, beer, cars, and computers. We are not here to buy their movies, eat their candy, and be told we are fat and lazy. We are here to live, experience, adventure. I think this is why our sub-conscience does what it does. When you see that open door, it tells you to run. We all want to do it. While at work, we dream of running off all day, but by the time our day off comes, we haven't the energy for it. So we escape with the entertainment devices that make us never have to leave home. WE are choking ourselves to death.
So tonight, when you lay your head down, wait for an hour, then shimmy the window, ever so quietly, push out the screen, and run. Run to everywhere you've wanted to go, run to everyone you've wanted to see, run to everything you've ever imagined to be around you, but you've never had the time to see. Take back the night, your freedom, and your life. Go into the night with no destination, no plans, fall on your back and look at the stars. That's what we are here for. That is adventure.


you can find more like this at seanherman.com