Yes, what else but home?

Observation:
When I was a kid, I hated going home. Like, anytime we were out doing something for the evening, a movie or a school program or what have you. Come time to go home, I would always feel a slightly heartsick wish that there were *somewhere* else yet to go, *something* else to do. A second stop of, say, going out for ice cream was the sort of thing that addressed that desire. But even if we got to do that, the feeling would still be there when it was time to go home then.

Whereas when we were home of an evening, and not doing much of anything (and I didn't have, say, a fresh stack of library books handy), I would mope around and say to my mother, "Can't we go somewhere and do something?" "Where do you want to go?" was the usual, patently-rhetorical response; and since there was pretty much no answer I could articulate -- Somewhere, anywhere, more exciting than here -- I would go back to moping until I eventually found something to occupy myself with.

It wasn't that home was a bad place to be for any tangible reason; there just wasn't much that was satisfying about it, either. I longed for something more, and whatever it was, it wasn't in the house.

( Gee, Erica, might this have any relevance to your adult life? )