I don’t personally remember this whole story, obviously, but I can’t imagine how else we could’ve just walked out. I guess, another possibility would be that only our mom was visiting the relatives and our dad was taking a mighty nap.

But well, my brother and I were apparently always well-behaved children. And we could’ve always phoned them, or rang at the door of an older lady living in the same house, or walked two streets over to our grandparents or three streets over to friends of the family.

Evidently, we even knew how to walk to our relatives across town, so I do feel like that would have been enough of a support network and at least my brother old enough, so that one could start trying to leave us home alone. You do have to start at some point…