Burrito

I have something that I’m really afraid of.

 And it’s not good enough to just tell myself to simply not be afraid of it. I know this because I have told people to simply not be afraid of their phobias, and it doesn’t work. Not only does it not work, but it makes people view you as a threat. I know this because if someone tells me to do what I’m afraid of, I view them as a threat.

We are all a lot more alike than we are different. That is a good thing; it makes it possible to study our behaviors and draw some conclusions about past and future events with some degree of accuracy. That being said, I should be claustrophobic, but I am not.

 My little sister and a couple of other kids closed me up in a hide-a-bed when I was 10 or so. It was my idea. I heard my older brother talking about his friends doing it, and I thought it sounded cool, so I wanted to try it. The real problem, aside from my propensity to not think things through all the way to the end, was that my co-conspirators in this little escapade were not a group of 14 year old boys, they were 8 year olds, and they weren’t strong enough to lift the bed to get me out.

 I vividly remember several things about the following minutes. I wasn’t uncomfortable, nothing hurt; in fact, it actually felt pretty good, like rolling yourself up like a burrito, except that I didn’t know what a burrito was at age 10. That’s funny, I don’t recall what we used to wrap ourselves up like before I knew what a burrito was. Anyway, I expect you know what I mean; you lay on the floor on on end of a blanket and roll roll roll, usually laughing, possibly hysterically, until you’re in a blanket tube and can inchworm around before you unroll yourself.

 Being folded into a hide-a-bed shared very few similarities with that kind of horseplay, the most pressing, besides the actual pressing, being that I was helpless. My thoughts went from Heehee, I’m a sandwich! to I need to get out of here! in the span of a single shallow breath, which was very hard to take. I used what I had been able to inhale to tell my sister and friends to get me out. I felt them try, but it wasn’t even close. I recall thinking I could never get out of here on my own. Ever.

 Panic crossed my mind. I envisioned myself thrashing and screaming in there, but stopped to think instead, and everything became so wonderfully clear; I could only do one thing, so I should do that. I took all the breath that I could, and then I took the next one. I flexed my shoulders in such a way that I was able to expand my chest and breathe a little deeper, but I also remembered from my recent breath holding contests with the Wizard formerly known as Geoff, that the more you do, the more breath you need, so I went very still, doing only what was necessary. I just breathed, and it was enough.

 Babies like being all swaddled up, it feels like womb, like arms, like comfort. Kids like to roll themselves up like some as yet undiscovered foreign food and craze the floor, or possibly, late at night when they can’t sleep because their thoughts are running wild and unstoppable, they quietly, so as not to awaken the sibling in the lower bunk, roll themselves up, all the way to the wall, pressing hard enough against it that the bunk bed tips a bit, and presses back. Holding. Holding you there as you cry.

Or so I’ve heard.

The hide-a-bed was nothing like that. I was maintaining a one breath barrier against a gibbering madness when my little sister and all her friends ran out of the room and left me alone with my shallow breaths.

We were feral children. We ate dirt, and didn’t panic. This was pushing it, though. I was very aware that, without help. I was doomed, like bad doomed.

 There was a bunch of adults in the living room just down the hall, and one of them, probably Mom, because Dad was leading the Bible study, came back with my sister, and, with a single heave, freed me.

 I don’t remember who freed me. I don’t remember if they said anything to me like, “Don’t do that again.”, I don’t remember speaking about it afterwards, about getting a talk about not doing things that will kill you, about the fact that I did some really risky shit at a young age, about me not having any brakes. I don’t remember. It may have happened, but there was a Bible study going on, so it also may not have.

 I remember my little sister’s face. She was wide eyed, and looking at me in the way that adoring little sisters look at their inexplicable older brothers who can’t seem to figure out how to live, knowing that, at some point, she’ll have to stop following him around.

 I remember feeling a little relieved that I wasn’t going to die in a hide-a-bed. I also remember feeling a little sad as all the thoughts rushed back in the absence of pressure. I didn’t know what that feeling was back then, I was ten years old, but I missed the emptiness, the calm, the peace, of being held, and only having one thing to think about, for just a little while.