The Greatest Comeback Stories of All Time Begin in Places Like This

I’ll call ahead and ask them to give you a job when you walk through the door.

There’s a tiny town in my province, plopped right in the middle of Canadian farmland. Its population is roughly 1300, and its two biggest attractions are a federal prison and an old rail car diner.

Although you can’t see the prison from the highway, you’re blind if you miss the “Starlight Diner Car.” A red neon sign sits above the entryway and it has a UFO permanently parked on the rooftop. Nobody knows the alien origin story here.

In true small-town-on-the-highway form, you’ll see at least ten big rigs parked out front of this diner on any given day. It’s exactly the type of setting you’d expect to see as a truck stop.

I’ve eaten at this diner a handful of times in years gone by, always at the same small booth in the back corner. The menu here consists of delicious dishes my grandma would’ve made. Hearty home cooking, usually slathered in gravy.

Somebody’s grandma definitely works here.

Each time I dined here I had just finished a visit at the prison. Family will do that to you. I bet half the customers in this diner either work at the prison or come after visiting the prison. I always felt like the waitress knew, as if I was wearing a name tag that read, “Hi, my name is: ‘Prison Fam.’”

Right next to the diner is exactly what you’d expect to see in a town like this - a rundown motel with white, plastic yard chairs outside each door. You can probably get a room for $28.00 a night because they know there’s no reason on earth you’d need to sleep in this town.

However….

If you were planning to run away from your old life and start fresh this is exactly the type of place you’re scripted to run to.

Doesn’t Hollywood do a fantastic job of showing us how possible it is to scrounge together $27.63 in crumpled-up money and run away to start a new life by waitressing in a small-town diner?

Alfre Woodard did it in Juanita.

Jennifer Lopez did it in An Unfinished Life.

Somehow, the women in these movies always seem to MAKE IT in obscure little towns exactly like this one. And we, the viewers, always WANT them to make it.

Here’s how it happens…

A woman (who does not have the fresh-start budget of

Elizabeth Gilbert

) gets off a Greyhound bus in the middle of nowhere. She’s got nothing but a suitcase in tow.

After crushing out a cigarette on the pavement, she walks into the nearest diner and asks for a job. The crotchety old boss gives it to her because he can see she’s down on her luck.

Eventually, the local folks warm up to her and slowly take her in as one of their own. Then, she ends up falling in love with the only deputy in town, she moves out of the rundown motel, redecorates a dusty little trailer that she saved up all her tips for, and in a few months? You’ll find her sitting under a big oak tree gently smiling with her eyes closed while she peacefully exhales.

She has made it…whatever her IT happens to be. And we were rooting for her the whole time, dammit!

Every time I watch one of those movies I feel like it’s waaay more appealing than it should be. There’s something so wholesome and freeing about the thought of going AWOL and turning up in “the diner” to start a fresh life. It’s borderline Hallmark movie but with a lot more struggle and grit.

In fact, these kinds of reinvention stories are so weirdly appealing to me that I’d be the type to go and try it, just to write the story. I want to see for myself if it’s possible to win at life in its most basic form.

It’s so easy to forget how to run.

The first thing I did on New Year’s morning in 2021 was take down my 2020 wall calendar and put up a new one. I buy the same calendar every year — Words To Live By. Each new month displays a funny, whimsical, or inspirational quote.

The first page of the year was this:

Upon reading it, I was immediately taken back to the old Kristi. The one who lived like she didn’t have a care in the world, even when she did. (Remember those prison visits?) She was able to put all her troubles and concerns on the back burner and live a little recklessly. She didn’t worry much about consequences because they always worked themselves out.

Remembering old Kristi inspired me to plug in my external photo drive and look for pictures of her. Indeed I found her, and now? I want to find her again.

Old Kristi used to dance with men whose names she didn’t know, because why not? She was on a rooftop in New Orleans!

Don’t have a clue what his name is.

In fact, old Kristi danced a LOT because she enjoyed making a spectacle of herself. She knew how to live out loud in any corner of the world, no matter who was watching, and she attracted like-minded people into her aura.

Don’t know his name either but his nickname on the street was “Ugly Man” 😂

She has audaciously jumped onto the back of many motorbikes on foreign country roads, just to go for the ride. She had no destination in mind, but she went anyway because there was a road….or sometimes, no road at all.

Yes, that’s me hitching a ride on the best motorbike trip in the world.

She used to be able to figure out the true meaning of life just by observing the setting sun. She went out of her way to find that meaning and she exhaled many times during her search.

Old Kristi successfully found beauty in every situation, even in the cluttered life she didn’t wish to be part of. She had a knack for finding magic everywhere she looked.

Current Kristi says she doesn’t have time to look for it anymore because she’s busy trying to keep her head above water.

Perhaps the most important aspect of old Kristi is that she didn’t just appear to be living this way. She actually did live this way. Her hair was always carelessly blowing in the breeze and her feet were always dangling over the edge of beauty.

Current Kristi’s feet are dangling from a desk chair in her living room every fucking day. She’s consumed by responsibility and thoughts of “what if,” when she really needs to be consumed by thoughts of how to take her life back and LIVE again.

These photographs and hundreds more are reminders that I used to be fearless in the pursuit of things that set my soul on fire. But somewhere along the way, I lost my soul.

The guilty thief has been grief, security, stability, fear, and just plain old loss of oomph.

2020 was a complete and utter dumpster fire for millions of people. For me, it wasn’t just a pandemic. It was job loss, the death of my only child, and the breakdown of every shred of self-assurance I’d ever known.

It’s funny how you forget who you are when everything that identifies you as YOU is stripped away.

But each time I look at my old self I long to be her again. She’s still in there, she just needs to find her way out.

I’m pretty proud of how ballsy I used to be while chasing my dreams. Life was less complicated back then.

That woman is bursting at the seams right now, looking for a way to make it all possible again, hence….Wildhood Wanted.

There’s no such thing as too much happiness, too much magic, or too many grand ideas. But there is such a thing as losing sight of it all under six thousand pounds of responsibility.

But hey…there are a million dirt roads leading to a million little dive towns out there. We just need to remember how to RUN like the wind and find our own little “comeback diner.” The door is always open and food for your soul is always ready to be served.

PS: Let me know when you’re leaving and I’ll call ahead and ask them to give you the job because remember….she (and you) will ALWAYS make it!

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Okay, now I REALLY want to know who has an epic comeback story, even if it’s still a work in progress! Lord knows we can all use the inspiration these days. Spill it!