foxcrayon: November 2013

The Locked Room

There was a point in time when The Locked Room was probably referred to as "that storage room in the basement" or "the basement closet" or something along those lines.

At that point in time I imagine it might have looked something like this:

I wouldn't really know for certain though because as far back as I can recall it looked like this:

The Locked Room acquired its title when my parents began using it as hoarding space for the many toys they wanted to prevent us from accessing. Particularly those irritating toys with unbearably chipper faces that sing or talk when you press a button.

Often times these toys would malfunction and start singing/talking at any given time of day without having their button pressed, making them 100% more likely to wind up in the Locked Room

So, The Locked Room's initial reason for being locked was to prevent us from accessing these annoying and/or broken toys. But at some point in time The Locked Room's purpose shifted from:

our parents' means of keeping us out

to

our means of keeping toys which we determined were creepy and/or evil inside.

We generally exiled freaky baby dolls, disconcerting clowns and various objects we established were possessed by demons

Years later no one ever bothers to lock The Locked Room anymore but somehow it's kept it's title.

Carpool

Before telling this story I feel the need to emphasize the drastic lengths to which shy kids will go avoid all verbal communication with others.

Example One:

Example Two:

That being said:

I was part of a complex carpool system in junior high through high school and consequently there was a wide spectrum of unforeseeable driving decisions and drop-off procedures involved day-to-day, depending on the preferred methods of the parent scheduled to drive.

As a junior high student at the time, I was accustomed to being dropped off at the junior high school building after the high schoolers were dropped off, but on some occasions the carpool parent of the day chose to drop all the students off at one building and from there we could cross the street to reach our proper building. The latter method generally took me by surprise and on occasion I would find myself accidentally not dropped off at any building.

I quickly became aware that the carpool parent was no longer within close proximity of either school buildings but was now on his way to work, unaware of my silent presence panicking in the backseat.

Bake Sale

There was a phase in my life defined by an all-consuming passion for horses, which spurred (<horse pun) me to seek employment selling baked goods so that I could invest a stallion or five.

I had little to no experience using the oven, but I figured all cookies are pretty much the same and no one would be able to tell where they came from.

I don't know how he saw through my genius facade but I was forced to step up my game.

They actually came out pretty gross. We hauled the gross lump outside in a wagon and waited for the loot to start rollin' in.

Logistically, we didn't think this through very well because we lived on the end of a cul-de-sac and the customer traffic flow was very minimal.

Eventually the mail carrier did drive by and we stood frozen with anticipation.

He actually got out of his truck to buy our cookies and we panicked in a wave a sudden self-consciousness combined with sheer joy, simultaneously ducking behind a bush.

I suddenly remembered that I needed to invest in a stable of horses and was motivated to step up and break off a chunk of the lump for the mail carrier.

After learning how many more dollars it would take to afford a horse I retired from my renowned career in the field of baked goods.

Using the Phone

One of my first encounters with social anxiety involved learning to use the phone. In order to cope with my fear of talking to humans on the phone I would script out how I imagined the conversation would go.