Lock In

It's a shame to see all of the video stores in town shut down, losing to those little red kiosks, satellite dishes, and the great and glorious Netflix. My own soon-to-be fifty-five year old mother is a big fan of Red Box. I'll admit, seeing box office hits for $1 is pretty great...whenever they actually have them. But there's another side to Red Box--a B-side. B-rated movies that is. Tonight, I sat at home with my mom (as most college kids do on Friday nights) and watched Buried, a Ryan Reynolds flick that came out last year that somehow got a 7.2 on IMDb. It's basically, scratch that, exactly 95 minutes of a sweaty, bleeding, dirty (sounds hot, but it's not) Reynolds stuck in a coffin by Iraqi criminals, (and the US isn't portrayed as too helpful).

Anyways, for once in your life, Ryan Reynolds isn't the point of this story. The point is, it reminded me of my own claustrophobic episode as a child.

My mom remarried when I was five. Upon parting for her honeymoon, she left my twelve year old cousin in charge, along with my seventy-six year old, hard of hearing grandmother.

We spent the evening under a fort of sheets, giggling at our grandmother's lioness snoring. I didn't actually know if lions snored or not, but it's how I described it at the time. I'm certain it was a fantastic day overall, but I honestly can't give truthful details because the trauma of the night consumes the rest of my memory.

Do you recall the Chokey from Matilda?

I do.
(^That's called foreshadowing.)

--No, my aging grandma did not put us in some sort of iron maiden torture cabinet.
...we did.

And the torture cabinet came in the form of my own closet. Three-quarters of the 2X3 space was filled with a bookshelf. The rest was crammed with various ingredients to a little girl's My Little Pony fantasies, or whatever the hell it was I liked when I was a brat. And we were playing some game, running in and out of the closet.

It was all fine and dandy till we forgot the broken doorknob, and locked ourselves in.

Looking back, perhaps my cousin was closetphobie, 'cause immediately she was screaming and freaking the crap out. I, being so young, remained calm and collected.

But it didn't help. Cassie yelled and cried for, say, seven hours straight. I, being the princess I was (we'll save that for another blog), took a nap. Somewhere in the middle of my slumber, her screaming woke me up...along with my bladder. But don't worry. I was well-equipped.

Yeahhhhhhhh....

Anyways, with a little nap and a comfortable tummy, my brain got-a-goin'.

Of course, as if we were some Mafia house-breaking pros, this worked after about fifteen seconds and we raced to the other side of the house, where Grams was just getting out of bed, returning her hearing aids to their proper home.

I then left for a sequel.