Category : Stories

Sub Category : Adventure

I have two things on my mind: sailing and how I'm going to get home. It is possible the two may go hand in hand. In my possession I have only a beat-up rowboat and rucksack filled with cheerios, 10,000 miles from Kansas. My parents have begun to wonder about me, or at least I assume so. I did not mean to be gone so long. How, you might ask, did I end up here? Well, it all started when I set out on the adventure of a lifetime.
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I was 18 years old and excited about the prospect of my first solo adventure. As a child, mom and dad had taken me everywhere from the Grand Canyon to Machu Pichu, the perk of being an only child with loaded parents. We never took anything seriously, whether we were pretending to be on the run or involved in a shady plot. Our adventures were truly adventures because we truly imagined them so, and my childhood is filled with happy memories of those times. Nonetheless, I had been itching to explore the world for myself when I finally became old enough to do so.
Then I was, so there I went. I headed for the European countries first along with some spotted cash from my supportive parents and a rather large knapsack. I saw everything from the Eiffel tower, where I was a spy being targeted by a terrorist organization, to the Berlin Wall, where I was member of a conspiracy to rebuild it. My imaginative nature never failed me, and I had a grand time, but something, or someone, was missing.
I was visiting the Pyramids of Egypt pretending to be possessed by a mummy, the latest stop on my adventure tour, when Barry Jones stumbled into my life out of absolutely nowhere. He was a man in his early thirties with thinning brown hair and copper eyes who was not particularly attractive. His nose was crooked and his attire messy, but for some unknown reason, he drew me in, perhaps because I mistook him as what I had been searching for.
Suddenly, I was no longer simply Mavis MacDonald, a brunette with a flair for adventure. Now, I was also Mavis MacDonald, the fool who believed herself to be in love. I’d been to Paris more than once, so we decided to take an unorthodox love tour. We saw the Philippines, Indonesia, and most of Japan. Throughout our journey, my wild imaginations never failed, and Barry always played along. Now, you are probably wondering how this story took a turn, as I am no longer in such euphoric circumstances. Well, I will tell you this. Perth, Australia is when everything took a turn for the worst.
In all my wild stories I had played parts in, I’d done the “on the run from a drug cartel” backstory more than once. In Perth, however, for the first time, I did not need imagination for a wild and crazy tale of danger, and most importantly, woe. You see, Barry had never bothered to tell me much about himself, but I had always known Perth was his home. In fact, it was part of the reason we had made it our next stop. Big mistake. Ironically enough, the part of Barry’s past he had neglected to mention was that of his mobster family, “The Dreamers.” A cruel twist of fate.
The Dreamers were cartel family that sold dandelions on the black market, telling customers they were daisies. I wondered how anyone would be stupid enough to believe a dandelion was a daisy, but it was still a cruel ploy. When faced with a reality like the stories inside of my head, I found it not nearly as appealing as I would have thought. I still thought I loved Barry, but I was starting to think I had made a huge mistake.
Barry had stolen my heart, or maybe something else, and as a result I had not thought of my parents in a very long time. The day I found out the truth about Barry, I suddenly missed them very much. I had traveled the world, seen everything, and even fallen in love, but now I wondered if the cost was truly worth it. Thus, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I ended things with Barry, which did not go over well, or at least I don’t think it did because his grandma chased me out of the house with a rolling pin.
This leads me to the present day, sitting on a dock with the only things I have left: a random row boat I acquired and a bag of cheerios. Home had never felt as far as it did now. Going out into the world had been grand, but it was also terribly lonely. I’d forgotten about the people I left behind, and now I was paying the price. As I hopped into my sailboat and pushed aimlessly out to sea, I realized I actually did have an aim in mind. If this rowboat would carry me home, I might never leave again, and that would be lovely in itself.