April 2, 2007
When I was a little kid I used to be afraid of being kidnapped. I had this crazy phobia from second grade up through fifth. My thoughts were tangled up in this idea that a bad man was out there, and he would probably get me one day. I think this ridiculous idea came about for many reasons. I distinctly remember this hot summer day when I was nine. The heat was thick and I was poking my toes into the melting tar that was accumulating at the end of our driveway. It was too hot to do anything. My friend’s mom, who lived across the street, came bounding out her screen door towards my house.
“Hi Mrs. Stofen,” I said as the tar burned the tips of my toes. Her face was red and full of fresh freckles. “Where’s your mom?” I pointed to the kitchen sliding door. She was pulling Molly behind her and I followed them through the brown dead grass. “Hi Dee,” Mrs. Stophen said in an exasperated tone, “Did you HEAR?” That’s the thing about living in the suburbs. The moms start talking in this exasperated can-you-believe-IT kind of way where they put an outlandish emphasis on certain words. As if it’ll give what they are saying some sort of better validity. “No,” my mom said puzzled. She often heard the neighborhood gossip last. “Well, there is a man in a green car, one of those old 1960 Plymouths, and he has been roaming around our neighbored the past week. He tried to get the little Jefferson girl in his car. He almost got her too; the police have been driving around keeping a watch out all afternoon.” She sighed then really big.
“Just keep a watch for him, and EMILY,” she looked at me sternly, “Don’t be hanging out by the street or talking to anyone you don’t KNOW.” I nodded quickly. I wasn’t quite sure about all this, but the way she gave me this stare, I knew it must be important. My mom didn’t think much about it. She had bills to pay, a dirty kitchen floor to wash, and five obnoxious kids to take care of. She never took these kinds of happenings seriously. I stayed inside the rest of the day.
A few days later I was out playing with the sprinkler when I saw him. It was just as Molly’s mom described. Puke green Plymouth with rust slithering up the side doors. I don’t really remember the face of the guy, but he drove up and down our streets with a strange and quiet presence. He’d look out the window but not directly at us. I immediately went over to my friend Elif’s house. She was two years older than me, and I knew she would know what to do.
“Well if you think you actually saw him, you need to stay outside, don’t go inside if your mom isn’t home, that is when he’ll get you. Kidnappers always break in when they see your mom going somewhere and leaving you all alone.” She told me this with confidence, and she said my best bet would be to stay out in public. Looking back, she was a ridiculous ten year old who watched too many America’s Most Wanted. But I listened to her.
The next time my mom left me alone, I ran outside to the field across the street from where we lived. I sat in the middle of the field with my legs folded. I peeled apart blades of dry grass for hours.
Then suddenly there he was driving down my street. The puke green car never stayed in the neighborhood long. I sat still. My eyes remained peeled until they began to water down my cheeks. Biting my lip I was invincible there in an enormous field, and I believed that somehow sitting like that-I was safe from anything out there. A little while later my brothers found me in the field. “What the hell are you doing?” they asked. They were older and found me as their entertaining nuscience.
“Come on, its time for dinner.” Little did they know I had been sitting like that for two hours.
As time went on I became obsessed with this idea that I would not age. I walked home from school with my friend Jenny. Her house was two blocks closer to school than mine. I would sprint the last two blocks-my backpack bouncing behind me. One night I was on my parent’s bed walking on my dad’s back. He worked in the city and hated his job, and sometimes I walked up and down his back to get the knots out. I sat down and looked at him. He was listening to channel 11 like he did every day at 6:20p.m. “Dad,” I said then. He looked over at me and gave me this half listening nod.
“Dad, I don’t think I’m going to make it to my high school graduation, I just wanted you to know.”
My parents were used to me-the dramatic youngest child. They also knew that my imagination was wild. I mean I was that kid who tried to dig for China-but instead of an afternoon excursion-I would spend weeks digging away-when all the other kids had gone back to their big wheels and sidewalk chalk.
So my dad looked over at me then and said, “Emily you are ten. Of course you are going to graduate high school. Don’t you even THINK about not taking school seriously.” I shook my head stubbornly, “No you don’t understand Dad. I don’t think I’ll make it to graduation. I don’t think I’ll be around by then. I mean maybe someone will take me away before I get that old.” He blinked and scooped a spoonful of sherbert icecream in his mouth. “Why do you let your imagination run away with you,” he said, and before I could answer he handed me his empty bowl; “Will you run this downstairs for me Em?” Sighing,, I nodded and shut the door.
One night I told my best friend, Jenny, about this phobia. I was on the phone and my mom overheard me. I don’t think she realized until then how serious it was. She came inside my room later when I was half asleep and began humming some catholic song from church. Growing up in a big family I sometimes felt like my mother was a few states away. Some days I even wanted to send her postcard-because I felt that far apart. But other times-I was there with her-and I wanted to hold onto those moments- like they were the last. I remember my mother as a kid late nights. I’d be crying and she would get a big glass of water. My mom propped me up and made me drink the entire glass in one gulp. By the last drop I suddenly was ok-about it all.
During those years I had this phobia, I wrote about how I didn’t think I would see my 18th birthday. It was an unexplainable fear. I wasn’t sure whether to run inside and lock the doors, or throw myself in the middle of an abandoned field. I felt paralyzed. My mom immediately called the school psychologist. The psychologist came to my classroom a few days later. She pulled me out into the hallway. “Are you OK,” she said. “Should we TALK.” Looking at this stranger, I suddenly snapped out of this coma. “No,” I said, “I’m fine.” It almost threw me off that anyone had noticed. I wasn’t sure where to go from there. The lady looked at me and nodded. I knew she would keep an eye on me. I don’t know exactly what snapped me out of all that madness. This stranger pulling me out of my class like that to check to see if I was to see Ok made me see that in fact, I was more than ok.
I think we have fears that stem from all the uncertainties we have in life. They have to get out somehow. So sometimes we channel them in certain ways or manifest them into something else because we don’t know how else to deal with life’s confusions.
I’m older now. When I imagine myself sprinting those last two blocks home I laugh at myself. Its funny how I snapped out of the idea I was ageless. We get consumed by ideas. Some days I’ll think back to the three years I felt I would never age. One time when I was in college, I stood on the edge of a 50 foot cliff. I was about to jump and conquer my fear of heights. I stood there, and thought about myself lying on my parent’s bed. I remember what I told my dad. Here I was 22, jumping off a cliff into a deep well of water, and it made me wonder about all the things we fear. You can’t always explain why you feel the way you do. We fear the unknown. We fear the known. Those years as a kid taught me about how ideas can control you. You can’t let a concept consume your whole life. Because suddenly there you are-sitting cross legged in an open field. We let what we fear overcome who we are.
I was only nine at the time, but I was suffocated by this idea, that, I would never make it to something better. I am almost 25 now. I still feel that. We all do. This idea- that-we won’t become the best we can be. We will always fall slightly short. But you have to believe that you are almost there-because you are.
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