We can have different ideas about what a scaredy-cat is, but I have always been one to some degree, especially when the sun goes down. I can pretty much tackle anything that comes my way during the daytime, but come nightfall, I feel as if I’ve lost my super powers. And, now that we are in the spooky month of Halloween, I’m on high alert.
Where did this come from? It started when I was little. I always thought “things” were under my bed, in my closet and I actually had night terrors – keeping up everyone in the house with my crying and screaming. And, as suddenly as they came on, they left after several months, but they lived up to their name. They were terrifying.
Also, I was raised by a scaredy-cat mom who turned on all the outside lights and closed all the blinds at dusk… because there could be people out there looking at us. For real – in our tiny, little town? Yep… and, I believed her.
When I graduated from college and moved to Houston, I took my scaredy-cat self with me. All of a sudden, I wasn’t in a town of two-thousand people anymore. I was in a city of well over two-million and the evening news reassured me that there were plenty of spooky people out there. When I read Stephen King’s, Salem’s Lot, I could hardly walk my dog at night knowing that there could be vampires hanging around on window screens.
And then, within a year – still in Houston, three very scary things happened. The first happened when I was walking my dog one morning before daybreak. A man who had just robbed a convenience store was running from the police and jumped over a six-foot fence just as I was walking by. I’m not sure who was scared the most, but thankfully, he kept on running and the police were close on his coattails.
The next thing happened when I got up one morning and went to take Nauzer the Schnauzer out for a walk and I couldn’t get out of my front door. As I walked around the house, I found that all of my doors were damaged and that window screens had been pulled off lower windows. Someone had tried to get into my home during the night and neither my dog or I had heard them! I had double locks on all the windows and deadbolts on the doors, so it must have been too much trouble for them, although they gave it a good try.
When the police came they shared the comforting news that when someone breaks into a home at night and a single woman lives there, they are usually after her and not her TV. They advised me to get a gun – after all, I lived in Houston – or better yet, a shotgun, so I could just stand at the top of the stairs and pump it. Whoever it was would leave when they heard that. I didn’t follow through with that suggestion.
And, then when I was thirty-three years old, the scary event happened that forever changed my life and anything I felt or thought I knew. The proverbial boogeyman abducted me from a grocery store parking lot and assaulted me, letting me know that he would finish me off before the evening was over. But, he didn’t, and I was able to get away. He was caught and because I had not been the only victim, he will be locked up forever. But, that nightmare stayed around for years and still rears its ugly head occasionally, although it no longer controls me.
Needless to say, I became hyper-vigilant about walking, driving, parking lots and being at home alone all locked up with curtains drawn. When I moved to D.C., Baltimore and Charlotte – I was extra careful. Big cities with lots going on, too, and you can never be too careful.
When Bob and I got married and bought a home outside of Baltimore City, the whole backside of it was glass. A veritable fishbowl. I wanted curtains drawn and outside lights blazing at sundown. Bob kept saying, “Who do you think is standing in our backyard looking?” I had no idea. Probably, a bunch of deer, but I wasn’t taking chances.
The alarm system was always on and stayed that way for several years until it started acting up. It got to the point that every time a fly farted, it went off, and sort of like the kid crying, “Wolf,” we lost confidence in it and just turned it off for good.
I also stopped closing the curtains at night. After all, who was out there except the deer eating all of my hostas? I felt safe.
So, about a month ago, we moved into our new home in Woodstock, Vermont. After living in major cities all of my adult life, I felt I was back to my roots, living in a very small town – about a thousand people in the district where we live, and another thousand or so in the town of Woodstock surrounding us. Vermont, itself, only has a population of 627,000 – smaller than most of the cities I’ve lived in. The crime rate is next to nothing in the area and the state is considered one of the safest in the nation. Bob said that’s because nobody lives here.
Well, the first thing I noticed was it’s very dark at night and it’s very quiet. For the first time in ages, I can walk out on our deck on a clear night and see all of the stars in the sky. No street lights to cause interference and there’s no noise… at all. Dark and quiet.
We have no window coverings at this point. We do have an alarm system that we are reluctant to use. We have porch lights on timers. And, we have motion detector lights on all corners of the home. Pretty well covered for a town like Woodstock.
But, old fears can live deep beneath the surface and can be easily aroused in my case. One night, I was watching TV in our new fishbowl without curtains and the motion detector lights near the French doors went on – several times. I froze and every horror story ran through my mind. Someone was out there. I just knew it. Even in a little town with no crime… the boogeyman had ended up in my backyard peering through the windows. Visions of Jason and Freddy Krueger were fueling my imagination. I hollered for Bob to come down and check it out. He told me to tell him when they were on the deck and then he would come down. Yeah, my husband, the hero. I finally decided I wasn’t going to be bait for any scary people and headed upstairs to the safety of my hero.
The next morning when I walked out back, it looked as if a deer convention had taken place in my newly, cleaned out garden beds – hoof prints in all sizes. They were probably wondering where all their goodies had gone and resigning themselves to the fact that they would have to wait until next year to get anything out of that garden bed. It also occurred to me that the motion detector lights had picked up on these intruders and that Jason and Freddy weren’t there after all. Just Bambi.
Without growing entirely complacent about possible dangers, it also occurred to me that my horror stories from the past and the fear they had generated within me didn’t need to control me in our quiet little version of paradise. The backyard is big enough for me and the deer… until they start eating the hostas.
[…] Ann Quasman […]