Some people are just naturally paranoid. I gave birth to one of them. At the age of eight she came to me crying, saying she was afraid that our house was going to burn down. To this day she blames me for allowing her to watch a movie about firefighters who saved a dog from a fire. Apparently, that’s what caused her fear and of course mom was to blame. She didn’t realize that her sisters watched the same movie and then brushed their teeth and went to bed while she was checking the house for bad wiring and throwing away candles and lighters.
Her paranoia got so bad that I had to take her to the family counselor. In retrospect, just seeing these words on a screen makes me wonder – How many moms can actually say they have a "family counselor?" Truth be told, I had one on standby as I raised my pack of children because there was always something going on. There were a variety of reasons for our visits – the fear of fire, the Energizer battery theft, the faux sickness to avoid playing with friends and the intercepted note passed in class about drinking beer. I don't make this stuff up. Thankfully, these situations were not all from one child, but they were a collection of situations from the collective clan under our roof.
One of the real beauties I enjoyed was the visits during track season to try to help my girl overcome the feeling that she was going to choke and die before each race began. To this day when she watches the Olympics track and field events, she feels like she's choking when the runners get into the starting blocks. This could be a sign that the visualization techniques were ineffective.
The fear of fire phase eventually went away and slowly morphed into a fear of being attacked by a stranger in the middle of the night, or anywhere for that matter. I didn't realize this until recently when the two of us went out to dinner and I was caught off-guard by her odd behavior.
From the time we arrived at the restaurant she acted a bit fidgety, but I simply assumed that she had her mind on other things. Her eyes shifted from corner to corner of the room to the other and she looked around at anything but me as I tried to talk to her. When the hostess seated us in the bar area instead of the dining room, she grew even more jumpy. She was like Mine That Bird at post time in the Kentucky Derby.
About 15 minutes into our meal, I brought something up about how loud the storm had been the night before. Immediately she launched into a story about how she had thought someone was breaking into their house during the thunder and that she might have to implement her "escape plan." Then she quickly reassured me that I shouldn't worry because her plan was "fool proof." I had no Idea what she was talking about, which happens sometimes, but she continued nonetheless, letting me know that if she should happen to need to implement her plan, she would be safe and sound on the top shelf of her closet under a blanket. She went on ... if not there, she would be in her 2nd choice hiding spot, which was the hollowed-out box spring of her bed, waiting for the "perp" to leave her house.
As she rambled on and on my mouth dropped open and I stared at her, completely confused. "Huh?" was all I could get out. I really thought she had lost her mind. "Perp?" was my 2nd word. "Yeah," she offered, and then she went right back into Alvin of the Chipmunks speed-talking description and continued, "I figure if someone is going to break into my house in the middle of the night, I'm going to need a great escape plan. So, the best thing is to outsmart the “perp.” You see when he's coming up the steps, I'll cleverly sneak into my closet and get up on the top shelf where we have our extra cologne and perfumes hidden that we don't want anyone to find...."
I held my hand up in her face -- "Wait ... you hide your own cologne?"
"Yeah," she said, without missing a beat,
“Why would anyone want to steal your cologne?”
“Because it smells good,” she answered with an obvious look, and the continued, "And then I'll get underneath the folded quilt where the cologne is rolled up and just lay there quietly until the perp leaves through the bedroom window, which he will definitely do, because I will have punched out the screen to make him think that I left through the window before I get up on the top shelf of the closet."
"Perp?" Again, was all I could mutter.
"Yeah, you know —- like on Law and Order?" she suggested.
"Oh. Right. Perp." My eyes and mouth were wide open.
"Orrrrr," she continued, "Plan B is to hollow out the box spring under our mattress way before the perp ever comes into the house (maybe this week) so when he comes in, I will get into the hollowed out section of the box spring and lay down flat with my arms stretched out above my head, and my toes pointed, kind of like Superman when he's flying through the air."
"Superman?" … I stared at her with curiosity, wondering if I should have left her on formula longer when she was a baby. “Yeah, you know, like this," and then of course, she proceeded to demonstrate the flying Superman position with her arms outstretched above her head with her fingertips reaching and pointed toward the lantern lights hanging above the bar.
Had I given birth to some kind of a freak? I supposed it was possible…
"Sweetheart, I love you, but you need to listen to me. What you described is not an escape plan - it's a hiding plan. Escape means you actually leave. What you are doing by somehow getting onto a seven-foot-high closet shelf or wedging yourself into an old hollowed out box spring with sharp rusted springs is actually staying and hiding - not escaping. If you hide, the perp might find you and kill you. So, you'll either need to change the name of your plan or come up with a new plan if you really want to escape."
"A new plan?" She sat there looking very perplexed and nervous, then took a long sip of her drink and twiddled her straw. "No, I can't. I've had this escape plan set up for a really long time." Then she admitted that she had gone over the plan with her husband and her dogs.
"Wait – your dogs know the plan with the closet and the box springs?"
"Well, yeah. We don't want the perp to get them."
I sat there looking at her for a few minutes, just taking it all in. I contemplated telling her it wasn't logical ... that a perp likely wasn't coming ... that she didn't need to hide her cologne and perfume... that her dogs didn't really understand her plan with the top shelf of the closet and besides, her wiener dog couldn't even jump that high because his legs were only two inches long. But instead, I decided to just let it go. I realized she was living in her own world and always had been, and who was I to come in and flip it upside down? Maybe this was just a phase like her 8-year-old fire paranoia and this, too, would pass in 10 or 20 years?
(c) 2012
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