Afterschool Special of the Week

My dad is a hunter (if you hadn't guessed after hearing that he owned a jackalope) and always kept a camper in the yard when he wasn't away on hunting trips. In the summer, my mom would let us play in it, which was heaven to me because it was like a mini-house.

Looking back, this probably wasn't the safest of decisions on my mom's part. For one, the camper has a fully functional gas stove. I remember pretending to use it, but must have had some common sense not to try and use it for real.

That's where my common sense ended, however, hence another unsafe feature...the closets. One day, when I was six and my sister was two, we were playing in the camper and I had the smart idea to get inside one of the tiny closets (you know how little kids are...they love private, dark places). As soon as I got in, my sister closed the closet door, inadvertently locking me in (I say that because she wasn't diabolical by any stretch of the imagination...at least not when she was two).

She was too young to understand how to open the door, it was the middle of summer and the closet was the size of a kitchen cabinet at best. I started screaming at the top of my lungs and seriously thought I was going to die in there.

My mom finally heard me and came running out. To this day, I can't think of a time when I was happier to see her.

Funny thing is that I'm fine in small, confined spaces, even today. But I get extremely claustrophobic in crowds of people, to the point of having panic attacks.