Tbf I don’t know how much “actual” danger I was in. More about the “potential dangers”… like:
I was Guangzhou, China. Ran away from home after my older brother was chasing me around the house… i don’t remember what instigated it, allegedly I touched his toys? and he didn’t like it and got mad at me and wanna beat me… grandma was home and didn’t do shit since she’s old af, so I just… ran to the door, opened it, rans out the apartment, down the stairs, into the alleyway of my building (not really a “street”, not much cars or traffic, you’d have to walk like 10-20 minutes to get to the main road), and my building was next to 白云山 so I just went there up the mountain… instead of going to the main street…
IDK why I did that. I was 6 years old… decision making ability wasn’t the greatest…
I didn’t wanna be followed by grandma… I was angry… I wanna get away from home… so going though the path in the mountains with the twist and turns would lose anyone following… (I mean I remember the location so if you want I can show you in baidu maps)
Before that incident, I went to 白云山 often with parents… so that’s probably why I felt comfortable venturing there…
so… yeah… a 6 year old boy in around the late 2000s… all alone… crying… prime target for a would-be kidnapper…
I was told that kidnappings were a widespread thing that authorities didn’t/couldn’t do much about… mom later scolded me about it… I got so terrified after that incident…
so, anyways… then I took a path that exited the mountain near my school which was also right next to the mountain area, it was an off day, no school… I think I only went to that area because that’s the only exit from the mountain that I knew of… cuz sometimes my parent or grandma… whoever was watching me that day… would take me trough that shortcut by the mountain to school to save time from the “normal” path through the city area…
So I then went towards the main street 广州大道北 on the alternate alleyway… and ventured into the big city… I took a bus to my mom’s work place at her electronics store in a mall… bus driver didn’t give a shit, probably assumed I’m someone elses’s kid…
Got there, mom wasn’t at work…
So then I took the bus home… missed my stop cuz I fell asleep… like holy hell I fell asleep, someone could’ve grabbed me and claimed they were my parent and I doubt anyone would intervene…
So I walked back that 1 stop of distance back to the stop I was supposed to stop at and it felt like it was 30 minutes away… felt like an hour to me… then I saw mom with a bunch of cops and we got reunited…
Mom got alerted by grandma so she got off from work to report me missing… that why she wasn’t at work when I got there
I was gone for probably several hours… could’ve been kidnapped and possibly murdered for organs at any time. My mom told me about that young boys that would get organs harvested by traffickers and girls would get sex trafficked.
I still have trauma from that day… mom blamed me because technically I ran out of the house on my own free will, but it was my older brother who made the house felt unsafe in the first place… he’s 5 years older than me btw
But other than that would be the countless times where at any moment I could’ve accidentally fall in tracks in the US subways… or get hit by a car… but everyone is also just as “close to death” as I am so the millions of “averted accidents” aren’t that unique… but yea that one childhood running away incident is the most traumatizing one… the most unique to my upbringing…
God damn reliving that memory, I felt like my 6 year old self was so stupid, why the fuck did I run away, like if I died, my older brother would’d probably be celebrating to becoming the only child again… like he was originally supposed to anyways…
Probably on the list of “wow that’s new” if I go to therapy… yea I need therapy honestly but I feel like therapist are so fucking dismissive… even in the west where acceptance of mental health struggles is supposed to be “more accepting”
I was told that kidnappings were a widespread thing that authorities didn’t/couldn’t do much about
The vietnamese tell their kids the chinese will steal you, the chinese tell their kids the vietnamese will steal them.
IDK how safe China was 20 years ago, but children running around independently today isn’t uncommon. It’s not like Japan, but parents seem less helicoptery than America.
I’ve had a few motorbike accidents, including skidding into the opposite lane going around a blind corner after the morning rain deposited silt, that had dried, and a few clise calls like someone turning across my lane to go left, coming up on a blind corner and having to brake and get near the wall after hearing a bus honking from the other side, stalling my bike at an intersection as an incoming dump truck failed to slow down, etc. But like your “I could have fallen on the subway”, the situations weren’t dangerous with proper judgement.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Tbf I don’t know how much “actual” danger I was in. More about the “potential dangers”… like:
I was Guangzhou, China. Ran away from home after my older brother was chasing me around the house… i don’t remember what instigated it, allegedly I touched his toys? and he didn’t like it and got mad at me and wanna beat me… grandma was home and didn’t do shit since she’s old af, so I just… ran to the door, opened it, rans out the apartment, down the stairs, into the alleyway of my building (not really a “street”, not much cars or traffic, you’d have to walk like 10-20 minutes to get to the main road), and my building was next to 白云山 so I just went there up the mountain… instead of going to the main street…
IDK why I did that. I was 6 years old… decision making ability wasn’t the greatest…
I didn’t wanna be followed by grandma… I was angry… I wanna get away from home… so going though the path in the mountains with the twist and turns would lose anyone following… (I mean I remember the location so if you want I can show you in baidu maps)
Before that incident, I went to 白云山 often with parents… so that’s probably why I felt comfortable venturing there…
so… yeah… a 6 year old boy in around the late 2000s… all alone… crying… prime target for a would-be kidnapper…
I was told that kidnappings were a widespread thing that authorities didn’t/couldn’t do much about… mom later scolded me about it… I got so terrified after that incident…
so, anyways… then I took a path that exited the mountain near my school which was also right next to the mountain area, it was an off day, no school… I think I only went to that area because that’s the only exit from the mountain that I knew of… cuz sometimes my parent or grandma… whoever was watching me that day… would take me trough that shortcut by the mountain to school to save time from the “normal” path through the city area…
So I then went towards the main street 广州大道北 on the alternate alleyway… and ventured into the big city… I took a bus to my mom’s work place at her electronics store in a mall… bus driver didn’t give a shit, probably assumed I’m someone elses’s kid…
Got there, mom wasn’t at work…
So then I took the bus home… missed my stop cuz I fell asleep… like holy hell I fell asleep, someone could’ve grabbed me and claimed they were my parent and I doubt anyone would intervene…
So I walked back that 1 stop of distance back to the stop I was supposed to stop at and it felt like it was 30 minutes away… felt like an hour to me… then I saw mom with a bunch of cops and we got reunited…
Mom got alerted by grandma so she got off from work to report me missing… that why she wasn’t at work when I got there
I was gone for probably several hours… could’ve been kidnapped and possibly murdered for organs at any time. My mom told me about that young boys that would get organs harvested by traffickers and girls would get sex trafficked.
I still have trauma from that day… mom blamed me because technically I ran out of the house on my own free will, but it was my older brother who made the house felt unsafe in the first place… he’s 5 years older than me btw
But other than that would be the countless times where at any moment I could’ve accidentally fall in tracks in the US subways… or get hit by a car… but everyone is also just as “close to death” as I am so the millions of “averted accidents” aren’t that unique… but yea that one childhood running away incident is the most traumatizing one… the most unique to my upbringing…
God damn reliving that memory, I felt like my 6 year old self was so stupid, why the fuck did I run away, like if I died, my older brother would’d probably be celebrating to becoming the only child again… like he was originally supposed to anyways…
Probably on the list of “wow that’s new” if I go to therapy… yea I need therapy honestly but I feel like therapist are so fucking dismissive… even in the west where acceptance of mental health struggles is supposed to be “more accepting”
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
The vietnamese tell their kids the chinese will steal you, the chinese tell their kids the vietnamese will steal them.
IDK how safe China was 20 years ago, but children running around independently today isn’t uncommon. It’s not like Japan, but parents seem less helicoptery than America.
I’ve had a few motorbike accidents, including skidding into the opposite lane going around a blind corner after the morning rain deposited silt, that had dried, and a few clise calls like someone turning across my lane to go left, coming up on a blind corner and having to brake and get near the wall after hearing a bus honking from the other side, stalling my bike at an intersection as an incoming dump truck failed to slow down, etc. But like your “I could have fallen on the subway”, the situations weren’t dangerous with proper judgement.