Me as a kid #3

When I was almost 6, we moved in to our house on Gardendale. The first night we spent in the house, I was playing in my room by myself and discovered there was a chain lock. I'd never had such privacy in my entire life and was thrilled I could keep people out whenever I so chose. Yes, I was five years old.

For novelty's sake, I locked the door and continued playing. When I decided it was time to rejoin my family, I climbed up on a chair to slip the chain from the lock. It wouldn't budge. Since birth, I've been a quick-to-panic type person. My fight or flight mode is on constant overdrive, which caused me to start yanking on the chain and yelling bloody murder. Everyone immediately come to my rescue, because I'll need you all. Or else I'll have to live in here for forever.

Through the opening the chainlock affords, I can see my mom's face first, then my dad, and my Uncle Jack. My grandma and grandpa were probably there too. There were a lot of faces on the other side of the door crack. Uncle Jack tried to get at the lock with a knife (the men in my family always have knives on them). Someone tried to reach their hand in. Ultimately, they had to calm me down, get me to shut the door (no easy feat when all I wanted to be was with the faces on the other side of the door), and explain that I must press the chain lock down and then over. When the door finally swung open, it seemed like a lot of panic for nothing.

HOWEVER

From that time on, I had weird uncomfortable fantasies about being trapped in my room for... forever. Sometimes I would imagine an evil man keeping me there, but most of the time I imagined the world had exploded, and my room was the last vestige of human existence floating in space. But I was always trapped for extended periods of time. I just assumed the duct work in that house to be space travel worthy.

What was my main concern? FOOD. Yes, the longest love affair of my life has been with food. And weird fantasy world part of my brain is not exempt. Oddly, my fear of going without food did not manifest itself with actual food. My preparation for the inevitability of being the last human survivor in the universe was to bring glasses of different things into my room and hoard them. Mainly I'm talking milk and orange juice. Have you ever lived in a room with rotting milk or orange juice? I'm not sure how I did. It got to the point where I knew how long a glass had been in my room by its state of decay. A regular scientist.

My theory was simple. Although the concoctions were foul, the solids which formed could serve as nutritious food, while the "water" that had separated from the solid could serve my hydration needs. I was able to kill two birds with one putrid stone.

Eventually, the glasses became so frought with decay, I knew I couldn't stomach them even in the event of annihilation. I'd rather starve than consume what was in the glass. Or my mother would notice that the majority of the McDonald's glasses were missing and insist I retrieve any I may have from my room (eventual space pod). She must have noticed the mold because I recall always having to wash them myself. After I scrubbed the mold from the Ronald and the Hamburgler glasses, I could feel free to start my hoarding cycle all over again. Except the next time, I'd go with Grimace.