If You Like Piña Coladas...

I'm the kind of person that goes into the room, first figuring out the perfect escape route as I simultaneously make small talk with my mom's best friend's friend's cousin's dog walker, and then I settle in and make myself comfortable. I have a few theories that I use to explain this.

1. Fight or flight. Biological instincts. I'm preparing myself for the worst. Which, in many cases, is having to make small talk with my mom's best friend's cousin's dog walker.
2. Something I did in a past life brings me bad karma and I get stuck in awkward situations that force me to immediately remove myself from.
3. You're reading the blog of the prodigal daughter of James Bond and I'm secretly honing skills for a future career in secret agentry. This is the theory that I find most plausible.

So yea, I'm a gal who chickens out and feels the urge to escape certain situations, rather than dealing with them like an adult. But hey, don't we all get that way sometimes? Life's rough. Gas is almost 5 bucks a galloon. The economy is quickly making it's way down the tubes. Global warming is frying our skin. We have every reason to dream of taking a vacation away from reality.

For me, it all started when I was about 6 years old. My older brother and his friend decided they didn't want me tagging along with them one summer day. Which caused me to burst into tears, feeling unwanted and alone. I ran inside, swinging the front door open, sobbing to my mother that I was running away from home because no one here wanted me around. I was going to pack up my belongings as quickly as possible, walk out the front door and never turn back. In laughter, she tried to tell me as kindly as she could (fighting through chuckling) that I was being irrational (Me? Irrational? Nooooo... not me.) and that she loved me and wanted to keep me around, least for a few more good years. But being the drama queen that I was destined to be, I wouldn't hear a word of it, stuffed as many barbies as I could in a handkercheif, tied it in a knot, and tried to find a stick that I could attach my makeshift luggage to. I envisioned how this entire scene would look to my mean brother and his friend, the one's who drove me to such extremes. I wanted to look as depressing as this...

But they didn't even notice I was gone, they just kept playing cowboys and indians. And since at 6, I knew it was pointless to live a life of poverty if no one would even miss me in the process, I got to the end of the street, turned around, went back inside and said "Ma, I'm back. I'll take a PB&J Sandwich. Lightly toasted."

The next time I can remember myself wanting to relocate was when I was a freshman in high school, and all my best friends made the volleyball team, and I got cut. I still think the team could have benefited from having a 5th setter on their roster, but hey... what do I know?

Then, we have the time that I was going through dramatics with boys in college and started googling schools in South Carolina. I've never been to South Carolina, but I thought that it would be a cool enough place to put on my invitation to my going-away party, the event that I planned on asking every boy who's ever broken my heart to attend. Again, I accept the fact that I was born a drama queen.

And finally, we come to the time when I had enough of winter in Ohio. I self diagnosed myself with Seasonal Depression Disorder and started looking at houses on the internet in Tennessee for me to move into. I even came close to making appointments with realtors. Mind you, I had about 250 bucks in my bank account at the time and maybe 14 bucks in savings. And I thought I was ready to purchase a home.

I never claimed to be the brightest crayon in the box.

Honestly, I'm the kind of person who fantasizes about dropping everything, starting from scratch, giving myself a clean slate. I see myself wearing big sunglasses with a silk scarf wrapped around my head, cruising top down, (I'd have a convertible just for this purpose), blasting "If You Like Piña Coladas" through my speakers and driving until I feel like I'm in a place that I could call home. Living out of my Nissan, with no money, no job lined up... just risking it all and letting destiny do it's job.

Actually, doing this would scare the living crap out of me, and of course I would never do it, without some kind of stability and structure to my plan, but it's nice to have a dream like this to take my mind off of the fact that I am putting $50 into my car, just to get half a tank of gas.

So, here is my dream, here is where I would live, here is the place that I escape to when things are getting hard to handle, and I feel the need to runaway from home...

This brings me to my fourth and final theory for why I always try to escape things. I just want to be able to say that I live in a "bungalow". That word makes me giggle.