By Marian, January 30, 2019 — When I was eleven years old I would walk to school every single day with five of my closest friends. Rain or shine we would always walk. One spring day I remember the weather was perfect. As we were walking, my friends Pinto and Hobsie came up with the idea to play hooky. No one wanted to sit inside all day while the sun was shining and it was warm, so we all agreed. There was a really old woman (at that time we thought she was old, she was probably about my age now!), Mrs. Gibson, that lived on my friend Hobsie’s street. We threw our backpacks into her backyard because we knew she would never see them and we would be able to get them without her ever knowing. I went to Catholic school so I had to wear a uniform. This made it very obvious that we were supposed to be in school, but at that age we didn’t think about it.
We walked up and down the streets of Philadelphia looking in shop windows and playing in parks we would pass. While we were walking we eventually became hungry so two of my friends decided to take someone’s milk and bread off of their front porch. When we sat down to eat the bread, we saw a cop car. Back then, the Philadelphia police cars were red. The cop stopped and yelled out at us so we knew we were caught. We took off running as fast as we could from the them. I ran into a cemetery and was eventually caught hiding behind a tombstone. I got put into the back of the police car and taken home along with two of my friends. All I remember thinking was, ‘Who should I be more afraid of, my Mom and Aunt Alice, or the Nuns at school?’ I got in trouble for truancy and my mother made sure that I never played hooky again.