{"id":5119,"date":"2026-04-22T00:05:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T04:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2026-04-20T12:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:47:10","slug":"s-stashed-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=5119","title":{"rendered":"S – Stashed Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Theme this April is “My Muse Says…<\/i><\/b>“<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The Story Spark for this story was Stay or Go.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The writing prompt I chose was Write about a person you have left\u2026or who left you.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The following is what my muse said I should write.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(This is a rewrite of a piece I wrote in 2015)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

S – Stashed Away<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was an impossible task, and time was running out. I had less than 3 hours left. But where to find it?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If my sisters ever found out that their pet parakeet was missing and something happened to it, I definitely would be added to their death list.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The bird was gone when I got home; all that was in the cage was a note that said, \u201cFind me.\u201d I immediately recognized the handwriting. I rushed to his house only to find another note on his door. It said, \u201cHelp, I\u2019m trapped in a box.\u201d I uttered a few curse words as the door opened, and there stood Ronald.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

——-<\/p>\n

Author\u2019s note: Those of you who haven\u2019t heard of Ronald before, he is a friend of mine. We grew up together. It seemed that every time I would play with him, no matter how hard we tried, something always went amiss. And by a miss, I mean that Ronald would be the one with the idea and the one who would “miss” its outcome or consequences, which was rarely good for me.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

——-<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought playing hide and seek with an object would be fun,\u201d he said. \u201cI get tired of trying to find you all the time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYOU COULD HAVE ASKED! This is serious. I need to find that bird before my sisters get home!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was your bird,\u201d was his reply. He said it would be easy to find. I had nothing to worry about. It was hidden in plain sight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I waited for the next sentence (his catch phrase), but it never came. So, in my head, I filled it in for him, \u201cWhat could possibly go wrong?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What could go wrong was that something could die. We played hide-and-seek before, but never with a live animal. And the fact that Ronald had taken it away in an enclosed box without anyone noticing wasn\u2019t his greatest idea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Before I could say anything else, Ronald\u2019s mother called for him. He apologized to me and said he had to go with her to pick up his father, and they were late.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His mother came rushing out the door, grabbed Ronald, shut and locked the door, and they were gone. I never got an answer to where the parakeet was. If it were in his house, I was doomed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So what was I to do? I needed to think like Ronald. Those of you who know Ronald realize that thinking like him is challenging. He doesn\u2019t think.<\/span><\/p>\n

For most people, if you get into their heads, you can follow a logical progression of their thought patterns and behaviors. It is reasonable that you would be able to deduce and infer what they were going to do and where they were going to do it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not the case with Ronald. To get into Ronald\u2019s head, you had to let your mind go blank, meaning there was no predictability, and he could do anything. There were less than two hours left before my sisters came home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A bird, a box, and Ronald, what do they have in common? Well, there was that incident with the bird and the oven <\/span>https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=2274<\/span><\/a>, but Ronald wasn\u2019t there for most of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ronald always seemed to disappear when the times got tough, just like now. I had to be missing something.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I tried all the usual places \u2013 the candy store on Broadway, the local butcher up the street (I knew it couldn\u2019t be there, but I was getting desperate), the abandoned house on Dash Place, and even the Food Fair on Riverdale Avenue. None of them brought me success. I now had less than an hour left.<\/span><\/p>\n

I chose to go back home and search the apartment again. I was in my sisters\u2019 room when I heard the front door open, and my sisters entering the apartment. I panicked. I hid in their closet, hoping they wouldn\u2019t find me. Luckily for me, they went directly to the kitchen for a snack.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While in the closet, I heard frantic wings flapping and little chirps. Looking down, I found the box. I quickly exited the closet and released the parakeet into their room, left, and hid in the hall bathroom. As soon as they entered their room, I went outside. As I was leaving, I overheard them arguing about who had left the cage open after cleaning it. I was in the clear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That was until two days later, when my oldest sister, Marion, confronted me with an empty shoebox found in her closet with several holes punched in the lid and what appeared to be bird droppings in the box.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember what happened after that. I do remember that Ronald was no longer given free entry to our apartment whenever he chose, and that Ronald and I were only allowed to play hide-and-seek outside. After all, what could possibly go wrong with that?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Theme this April is “My Muse Says…“ The Story Spark for this story was Stay or Go. The writing prompt I chose was Write about a person you have left\u2026or who left you. The following is what my muse … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[70,510,360],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-stories","category-story-writing","tag-a-to-z-blog-challenge","tag-a-to-z-blog-challenge-2026","tag-ronald"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5121,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions\/5121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}