~When I was 4 or 5 and still living with my grandmother, I used to sleep in a full sized bed which was pushed against a wall in one corner of the room.  Every night as I waited for sleep to find me, the streetlight would illuminate the room and I would lay there on my side staring at the top of a nail which was feintly discernible under the paint.  And as I would lay there looking at that nail, I would find myself incredibly focused and overcome with the feeling that I was shrinking smaller and smaller until I was so tiny I was insignificant and I remember this overwhelming sense of panic that I might be lost forever and not find my way back to regular size.

~ I also remember when the movie THE REINCARNATION OF AUDREY ROSE came out and I learned what reincarnation meant.  From that moment on, I had an intense fear of death.  What if reincarnation was real and you were born over and over, each time to different people (and wouldn’t you have to be since everyone you loved wouldn’t die at the same time as you?) and what if in some of those lives you were abused or tortured or murdered or worst of all wound up in Russia where they made you join the army?  (Even back then I knew I was different and the thought of being forced to be in the military and use a gun was enough to send me under the bed with a pillow and blanket for a “de-stress nap.”)  Most disturbing of all to me was wondering what if you could remember either the people you loved or the feeling of having loved someone but being unable to recall their name or find them and spent the rest of your life with this huge empty spot inside you.  Just typing this has me thinking about heading back under the bed for some mental health time.

~ When I was maybe 5 or 6, I stepped on a rusty nail and ran it in the bottom of my foot.  Because my mother worked nights, my grandmother  decided it could wait until the next day for me to get a tetanus shot.  In the meantime, she went on and on about how she hoped I didn’t get lockjaw.  Of course, being a child and not knowing about all the exotic and horrific diseases that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life, I asked what lockjaw was.  My grandmother explained that it was a disease where your jawbones sort of fused together so tightly that the doctors couldn’t break them apart and you couldn’t even get a straw between your teeth so all you could do was wait until you starved to death to die.  For the next 8 years, lockjaw was my greatest health related fear…until I was 15 and read CUJO by Stephen King. Thanks to that book, rabies became number one with a bullet on my short list of diseases I was certain I was contracting in one way or another at least 3 times a day.