When I was a Child

I used to try to roll my eyes back into my head, so if I was ever attacked by zombies or vampires in the middle of the night, when I awoke, I'd only show the whites of my eyes, and then they's think I was one of them.

I also used to be afraid that the things on my posters would come alive every hour, on the hour (but only in the dark, when I was in bed). I would hide under my Voltron comforter, which I believed had the power to protect me. I would peer out at my digital clock and wait for the evil minute to pass. I would try to keep my body from moving, tightening my stomach as I inhaled with my chest to balance things out, hoping to avoid detection.

I had a "blankie." It was yellow, and I suspect it had flowers and such things on it. It was my blankey since my early youth. I wasn't wuite as bad as Linus, but often close.

Vampires were my biggest fear. I even still have vestigal nervousness sometimes - irrational, but it just gets me in a soft spot. When I was in 4th grade, the principal at my school was going around to all the classrooms on Halloween reading stories. The story he read our class was about a vampire outside the room of an unsuspecting victim. I remember him sitting in the rafters, looking down as the moonlight fell across the victim's neck. To this day, I keep my blinds angled the opposite of most people. Mine are aligned so that from the outside looking in, you have to look up - not down. I used to have a window above my bed, and I was terrified to look up through my window to see the overhang of the roof outside.

My first distinct memory is being tall enough to look out my bedroom window and see across the street. I also remember being short enough that reaching as high as I could I could just touch the surface of the kitchen countertop. And going to the "loft" my kindergarten had after I finished all my assignments early.