Stolen Lines #5 - Running away to the islands

Tell me . . . have you ever thought about changing your life?

I have.

I did.

A couple of times.

But the most significant time I remember, I was young. 18. In my first semester at college and my girlfriends and I just weren't ready. Not in the least ready for that next phase of pre-adulthood garbage.

The solution?

We voted on a temporary soujourn from the college plan, and we decided to drop out and move to Hawaii.

Perhaps not for everyone, but for four small town girls who’d yet to have consumed all the booze available to us at the time, it was a fabulous move.

We spent two years on Oahu. We got jobs on the South shore. In the oceanfront hotel bars as cocktail waitresses and bartenders (you only had to be 18 to serve liquor then). 21 to drink – and we had good fake IDs.

There were midnight swims and boys. Island boys and vacation boys. There was dancing. There was booze. There were surf lessons and day sails.

It was 2 years of reckless fun.

There was a romance with a naval officer. He was not so much a gentleman; it was my bad boy phase. There were no Righteous Brother serenades, but I didn’t mind it much.

There was booze.

There was a tattoo (my one regret).

But, I’d changed my life. I’d left small town, wine country life and I’d run away, spontaneously, no plan, just seeking fun and escape. Albeit temporarily, I changed my life.

Eventually, it came time to change it again and go back to school, but I didn’t look on it as a backward change. It was forward.

Tell me. . . . have you ever thought about changing your life?

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I stole the first line of this post from a play called Betrayal written by Harold Pinter. It’s part of Grace's 5th experiment with Stolen Lines. Grace provides the line, you start and end your post with the line and whatever you put in the middle is yours.