[theFIRMbss]

>I wish you rotten luck in your crusade to criminalize running away

The criminal here --
if there is one -- is TV!
I bet local police

wondered if this case
was kidnapping or just flight.
If not for TV,

nothing might have come
of this, and the woman might
have just returned home.

If you ran away,
would you expect the whole world
to shine a spotlight

on your private life?
(Heck, I know a young woman
who disappared. She

turned out to have gone
to Milwaukee with a friend
for some kind of fair.

Of course, in those days
the media didn't care.
Those were better days . . .)

[Cboldt]

I only ran away once. I was about 10 years old and went to the field at the end of the street. I made a stick house. Nobody missed me. My folks drove by after a few housr, stopped at the field, and hailed for me to get in the car.

My kid brother went missing once. He was found curled up in his closet, with a blanket, taking a nap.