When I was very young, a neighborhood girl bullied me. I don’t remember exactly what she did, but I do remember that for years afterwards I was petrified of spiders. And I remember her face: pale skin, pretty freckles and squinting blue eyes. If you met her in passing you would think:
“That’s a pleasant-enough child.”
But if you spent any real time with her you would think:
“I bet this kid is going to grow up and become one of those crazed nurses who kills all her patients.”
For years after the spider debacle, at bedtime I would ask my parents to tuck me in very tightly to keep the spiders out. Which of course was insane. “Tighter, tighter,” I would tell my dad, as he tucked me in with army precision. Then all my stuffed animals had to be placed around my head for protection, like a magical stuffed crown.
If God forbid a spider was found in our house, I had to watch dad flush it down the toilet (I feel guilty writing this now, sorry spiders) and I would stare into the toilet bowl, making sure the spider was vanquished to the sewer system.
The fear of spiders combined with my fear of fires to make me one very nervous youngster. Back in the day, it was common for parents to put large stickers on their children’s bedroom windows so that firemen would know directly where go. But the stickers were kind of scary-looking, at least to me: they depicted a fireman holding a child in his arms with flames in the background.
At night, tucked in so tightly I was barely able to move, I would pray:
“Dear God, I hope things are going well. Please when I die, could you make it not by fire? I could drown, that would be fine. But please don’t let me burn to death. Thank you so much God, I love you.”
Though I was obviously a nervous kid, I was also an organized kid, who had a packed ready-to-go bag in case of emergency, aka fire. I kept it in my closet in an easy to grab location. The bag contained only one item: my old Snoopy, flattened with time like Flat Stanley, with silly putty stuck to his long black ears. I imagine a fireman trying to scoop me out of bed, flustered by the tight sheets and me saying:
“Not so fast mister, I’ve gotta grab my snoopy bag first.”
sparkledame 