Question 2

What is your fondest childhood memory? Who was there? What was going on?

I was in Kindergarden. You know how most classrooms at that age have their own bathrooms? Well one day I actually managed to lock myself in. Seriously. There was no trick to the lock. I wasn’t an idiot. There wasn’t anyone on the other side of the door preventing my escape. I just went into panic mode and couldn’t undo the lock. The fireman assigned to our school at the time was Firepal Matt. I had probably been in the bathroom for a solid 15 minutes by the time Firepal Matt made his entrance. I had him trying to tell me how to turn the lock, I had my teacher doing the exact same thing, and then I had my fellow classmates, some of them murmuring, some of them laughing on the other side as well. Let me tell you, that wasn’t fun. The next thing I heard was, “Maybe you should get the axe.” WHAT?! Now I’m totally freaking out, but things began to clear up a bit. I remember not being able to hear anyone’s voice at this point. It’s like everything went into slow-motion. The tears stopped, I walked up to the door, pushed the lock to the right and pushed. I was greeted by a lot of faces, some surprised, some with pity, but I just walked over to my desk and sat down trying to gauge how embarrassing that was. (Memory stops here). After writing this, I feel like this is the first and only time I can remember going into survival mode. Now I know that sounds silly, it was only a bathroom, but I was 5. I was locked in a small room with talk of axes on the other side. To me, that WAS a live or die situation. I don’t know if it was because this experience happened at such a young age or if it’s a basic human response -or both- but I’ve never experienced panic like I did that day. If anything, I’ve been told I’m abnormally calm in alarming situations. Weird. 


Note: I know this isn't a "happy" memory, but I took fondest to mean a memory that I took a liking to, so my decision stands :)