Can you remember ever being "lost" when you were a child & if so, how did it feel?

Nope. I had a great childhood. I come from a good family. :)

@Jude: Good families can get separated in public too. :)

I got separated from my mom a few times as a kid. Always my fault, I was distracted by shiny, pretty things and decided to explore. When I realized I was alone I felt bad, I knew my mother would be freaking out so I just found a map, looked for an employee or the service desk and made them handle the problem that was me.

I wasn’t too scared myself. Upset, yes, because I knew how my mom would feel.

I think I was 4ish and 7ish when those happened.

And besides, my mom had my two older siblings screaming and throwing crap in public. I was the quiet, calm one. I wasn’t the focus on public outings. I kinda slipped through the cracks when my siblings threw tantrums.

I got lost walking home from kindergarten.
A boy named Tom helped me by asking his mom to call my mom,who then blew up! XD
I thought my route was better…gosh!!

Horrified.

My mom often forgot to pick me up on time or forgot to meet me where she said she would. The first thoughts racing through my brain were always “What if I never find her again?!”

@asmonet Guess who had little sleep last night? This girl. :) I read the question wrong.

Yes, once I got lost in a shopping mall. Mall security paged my Mom. I don’t remember being afraid, though.

I got separated from my mother at the Pacific National Exhibition when I was 8. I was terrified. I looked frantically for her and after what seemed like hours I finally found her. I remember being shoved this way and that way by an uncaring crowd and coming so close to tears.

i got lost in Edinburgh once, my big sister was keeping an eye on me whilst i played on the swings in a park, suddenly she was gone and i panicked and got lost, fortunately two female students picked me up ;) and eventually reunited me with my parents, scary and i was suspicious of my sister ever since… :I

@lucillelucillelucille Yeah it can be pretty daunting seeing mums “blow up.” Been there, done that…scary stuff. They do mean well though, I think :¬(

I once got lost in a large playground/maze park when I was around 6. All I remember about it was that no one else was around, and I seemed to keep getting turned around. I was getting cold since it was getting late, and scared. Eventually my mom found me near a large tunnel in the park.

Ah memories . . .

Not as a child, but as an adult I once got lost on a hike in Arizona and thought I’d never find my way back. It was scary as hell.

Lol….I grew up near a (conservation area) forest….I have no idea how many times I got lost in that forest….The first few times were kinda scary, but after that it wasn’t too bad, by the last time it was fun. (Longest time was 3 days)

I remember one time in first grade, my mom was late picking me up and I was freaking out. Thankfully one of my friends and his mom stayed with me until my mom was able to call her and tell her that the car had broken down (this was before the days of everyone having a cell phone). Don’t remember ever being lost in a public place or anything though…

@coffeenut three days???

Thanks! As I said I’ve never had the misfortune, but as a parent I did experience this. When my son was 4 yrs old myself his mum & he went shopping. He was toddling all over the place always on the move, anyway all of a sudden he just vanished. Horrible feeling, turned out he’d took himself off to a changing cubicle we were in a clothes store He’d pulled the small curtain in there hiding himself. Only gone for a minute, the little bugger…..tinker :¬)

@mammal‘s answer reminded me of a time when my sister was lost. We live in Northern Virginia, her theatre class was participating in an international festival in high school that was to take place in Edinburgh. While touring a museum my sister told her teacher and chaperone that she needed to go to the bathroom and was assured that the group would not go on until she had finished.

So she comes back out of the bathroom, and (from the students accounts) her teacher had apparently turned from speaking to her, immediately loaded everyone on the bus and drove back to the hotel. Leaving my sister alone, in a foreign country with no money, no phone and only 16. Eventually she got a hold of her teacher and she came back for her a few hours later. And at some point this teacher got so pissed at the event that she bitch-slapped my sister in front of other students. And can I just mention my sister was loved by the faculty, she wasn’t a problem kid with a smart mouth and a bad attitude. She was a normal teenage girl.

My sister called us at like 3AM are time and left a 4 minute message of hysterics and crying. We didn’t understand a word of it and had to wait to get a hold of her or anyone again so we could find out what happened. My mom was pissed.

And somehow, that bitch continued to teach.

When I was 3 or 4 I went out the front gate of our home, turned right and began walking. I left the streets behind and kept going further and further into the countryside until a bus travelling the other way stopped and the mystified driver took me on board.

I had become tired of playing in the garden and took a sudden urge to see the world. Once I set off I didn’t know how to stop. I wasn’t scared but I was glad to be reunited with my parents again. I never did anything similar, though I still like walking.

@SpatzieLover lol…ya, most were just a few hours or a day, It was ok though at the center of the forest any way you went you would reach a road in about a day and a half, I also after the first time had my survival pack with me including a charged cell phone just in case and all the survival courses I took I was never in any real danger from being lost

By the end after the three day one I knew every inch of that forest…

@coffeenut My sort of brother got lost in a huge forest here in Wis overnight. He was an adult at the time, and it was quite traumatic for him (this was before cell phones) ;) I just can’t imagine 3 days.

I got lost at a department store when I was little. I was terrified, since I was only by my mother’s side. Luckily I found her in about 5 – 10 minutes.

Yes, I was probably five years old. We were visiting relatives, and I took a little walk down the sidewalk in front of my aunt’s house. I think I must have forgotten which direction I had gone (right/left), but I suddenly realized I didn’t know which way to “go back.”

I began to cry, and a neighbor approached me to ask my last name. She knew where to take me, thank goodness. In modern times, I’m not so sure we have that type of knowledge about all our neighbors.

I do remember being very frightened and feeling a little “silly” that I had not paid more attention.

@SpatzieLover Well the cellphone (lol…The Brick) only worked wile on 2 roads (closest to the city and I never told my parents that ) And the weather was usually nice….. There wasn’t much wildlife that could harm me except for the monster those bastards at the summer camp told us about when I was little That I never saw…lol. Also I have always loved the forests…. So I enjoyed it, even though I was lost…

I got lost when i went shopping in town with my mum,,,, I was only around 4 but i remember it like it happened just a few days ago, i remember feeling panicked and scared somone bad would get me…. mum found me sitting on the bench near the sweet shop, she was just relieved to see me and didn’t say much. I can’t remember how i got lost in the first place though…

I got lost as a child in Chuckie Cheese, and felt utterly terrified because the place was utterly packed….I thought my parents had left me. I went up to the front desk and they announced my name and everything…very embarassing. They came up and got me, of course. My mother had gone up in the tubes to look for me, and she was pregnant! I felt horrible…. One of the few bad memories of my childhood.

I got separated from my mom and aunt in a department store in the 70s when I was like 4 or so. I remember I kept looking in the fitting rooms for a clean one for them to use, but when I finally found one I considered good enough, I couldn’t find them anywhere. Apparently they tried on whatever and had no clue I was trying to find them a perfect fitting room.

Anyways, I started crying a lot and don’t recall the rest. Eventually my mom found me crying at the clerk’s desk, and she asked why they didn’t say my name over the PA system. The clerk said she wanted to, but I would only say my name was “Superman.” My mom said she’d have known that was me if they’d said that.

And I’m sure I’ve been lost before that I didn’t enjoy…I just can’t think of any….

When I was 7, I went to a outdoor birthday party for the kid across the street (who, in hindsight, had piss poor parenting skills). Somehow, the group of 7 or 8 kids decided that we should wander off into the woods behind their property, where we proceeded to get lost for several hours. I remember the other kids crying and screaming, and I just remember being frustrated and annoyed. Luckily, at about dusk, my childhood dog (a little cockapoo mix) slipped out of the door and got away from my mom, and then somehow found us. Since it was getting dark, she knew it was dinnertime, so we followed her out of the woods until she brought us to my house. After I was home, and everyone else was gone, then I cried.

Even then, I couldn’t see how getting hysterical helped the situation, and was annoyed by the drama.

It was a Sunday morning in the new mega-church that my dad had relocated us to. Sunday school at my old church would end with our parents shuffling into the classroom to pick us up. Not so at this new church.

Class ended and the teachers rushed us all out of the room into the cavernous halls of the megachurch. I was swept up among the stampede of human cattle and pushed along the halls like flotsam in the tides. I was 5 or so at the time, and this was before the age of cheap cellphones for everyone, so I had no way of locating my dad or step-siblings in the massive building. After a while of searching the halls amid a sea of unfamiliar faces, I began to cry in desperation and ask people if they “had seen my daddy.” Most people ignored me. A few people looked at me with disdain, grunted, and went about their way. (I guess they had forgotten to read Matthew 25:45 in their Bible studies).

After a while, a single teenager approached me and asked if I was lost. I told him yes and that I couldn’t find my dad. He reassured me that everything was going to be okay and led me to the front desk where my dad and stepmother were waiting.

Only in a recurring dream, and it was scarey.

I remember one time when I was about 7, my parents thought I was lost in a big department store. I wasn’t lost. I was sitting in the book department, reading.

I don’t remember being lost for any length of time, but I remember looking around and not seeing my mother; I immediately would scream—she would come running. I specifically remember walking with her downtown. I would always hold on to her coat or dress. We were walking along and I looked up and was holding on to a stranger’s coat and, of course, I started screaming and mother found me. I remember that like it was yesterday.

I was about 4 and my dad sent me to the store with a note to buy him bull Durham and rolling papers. I made it there ok, but I made a wrong turn going home. I ended up at a gas station on a busy street. They either read my note and looked up my dads number or I told them (I don’t remember) but my older brother came to get me.
When my family said, “Judi, you were lost!”
I answered, “I wasn’t lost, Joe (my brother) knew where I was!”
This was the early 60’s. I know, I know…. Today I would probably have been put in foster care.

The thing is, I had such a vivid imagination as a kid that I can’t always tell what are memories and what are stories I created that I ran through so many times in my head that they feel real. Lost is one of those, maybe I got lost, or maybe I had just read the part of one of the “All-of-a-Kind Family” books where Hennie gets lost and gets ice cream and her sisters get jealous. Could have been me, right?