Well at least they Cared enough to search idk if the police would've been mad or somehow change your family the third time or more versus like just ignoring you to teach you a lesson/wait for you to find ur way on ur own tho I hear they have mini gps you can attach to a kids backpack now
My mom always said that for the most part I was a very well behaved child, I was always happy to sit and quietly do little kid shit but because I was so quiet it was almost impossible to tell if anything was wrong or not.
But I was under 5 years old each time it happened and there was never any fine or anything.
The first time I was 3 years old, I crawled under our deck and took a nap (seemed like a good idea at the time). Then there were a bunch of cops running around when I woke up. So I hide because I thought I was going to get in trouble. They didn't find me until they researched the house. They had already started searching the woods before they found me.
The second time I was three and a half, and on a fishing trip was my family. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, were with us. At some point my dad catches a fish and I hear him say something alone the lines of "Damn, I forgot the buckets in the truck." I decide to take it upon myself to help and go to the truck and get the bucket. In the maybe five minutes it took me to get the bucket and come back my family had already started looking for me. My cousins (11 yo & 13 yo) said they'd search the trails around the lake but the lake was bigger than they thought. It looked small at the part we were at but it's actually one of the largest lakes in the American south. But it turned into a search for my cousins after they got lost. The rescue people called a helicopter for the search, it found my cousins still on the trail about four miles away still trying to circle around the lake.
The third time was just before my fifth birthday. I just went over to my friends house down the road to play Mario 3 (it was the closest house, about a quarter of a mile away) and forgot to tell anyone despite my parents drilling the whole "Don't go anywhere without telling us first!" thing into my head. His mom wasn't home and his dad was wielding in the garage, we knew not to go in there when he was working. But we still played in his basement for like two hours until his dad came in to check on him and finds me there. Apparently he had come in to check on my friend while I was in the bathroom or something and told him to stay put but didn't think to mention to him that he was going out to join the search party looking for me. Later after his mom rushed home she came down and found us together and told my parents. Needless to say my mom was fucking pissed, I got grounded for like a month and a half.
I feel bad for my mom, she's such a worry wort.
My mom has mentioned other times but didn't elaborate on them and I barely remember any of this, it's been almost four decades and I was really young. Anyway, the moral of the story is, tell people before you go anywhere or else they might call the cops.
I've got to stop posting long ass stories while half asleep at 7:30 am. This is probably just a rambling mess and I'm to tired/lazy to proof read any of it. Good luck deciphering any of this shit.