When my wife and I were kids this was normal now it is abuse?

[hunter]

21. I was a feral child, and I can't claim it was all good...

...but my parents always gave me the tools I needed to stay out of serious trouble many years before I ever needed to use them.

By the time I was twelve I knew EVERYTHING about darker humanity, and I avoided it successfully. I laughed and ran away from a couple of pedophiles, male and female.

In middle school I'd get into some more-or-less trivial trouble, sometimes with teachers who were telling me "to be a man" or other such nonsense, so I'd run off, jump the chain link fence, and be free.

Panicked school officials sometimes called my mom, and she'd tell them I'd probably be home for dinner, which was usually true, mostly.

By the time I was sixteen my time away from home could sometimes stretch for days. I was sharpening my skills as a sofa-surfing or sleeping-in-the-bushes homeless person.

By eighteen my away times could be a week or a month or two, as it has been ever since. People who love me know who to call and where to look. My cell phone might be working, it might not.

My youngest sibling wasn't always so lucky as his older siblings have been. Our parents ran away from home, leaving him to manage the ranch.