I have discovered something fairly alarming in my past that makes me worried as to my future welfare. The discovery that I was so misfortunate to uncover is that I am truly unreliable in dire situations. Actually, to be perfectly blunt, I'm an idiot in dire situations. Now I have not had many of 'said' situations to go off, but I did have one of sorts that proved me so utterly lacking in any rational response to emergency that I fear should a real one occur I would be totally and utterly doomed. I suppose I should start at the beginning.

It was about six or seven years ago, around Valentine's day. I know this because my parents had bought those really cheap candy hearts and me and my sister had spent all day purloining them from the kitchen counter whilst my mother was obliviously typing away in the family room. Eventually my parents left, and it was just my sister and I, totally and utterly free to eat said candy hearts until our teeth were so coated in sugar that you could actually feel the cavities beginning to form. Ah, the joy of Valentine's day. Anyway, we were content to just hover in the kitchen and eat the conversation hearts until they either came home or we ran out, when suddenly we heard a knock at the door. A rather violent knock. Actually I would definitely call it a pound in retrospect. Now before I continue you must realize that my family was raised to be paranoid. We were raised on hearing bloody stories of young girls getting murdered in their kitchens or kidnapped on the way home from school to the point where I am pretty much now a paranoid freak who refuses to answer the door even when my entire family is home as I have no desire to be stabbed or shot or experience some other such unpleasant greeting. So naturally it's no surprise that we weren't allowed to answer the door or phone when alone, and to this day a knock at the door is enough to stop us in our tracks and make us the equivalent of wide eyed statues until we are sure the knocker has departed. It's actually quite the adrenaline rush! Anyway, back to my story. The fact that in this case we had not only a knocker but a pounder was quite a big deal. After all, if a knocker is a possible axe murderer who is politely asking if he may come in and kill you, a pounder is an axe murderer who has skipped the initial asking permission stage and is moving right in to rude murder without asking first at all. As it was, this pounder was quite determined, for he would pause a moment and then proceed to pound even more violently than before, and from the sounds of it he really wanted to get in. I wish I could say I thought clearly during this situation, that I had the sense to be afraid, but really my mind went totally and completely stupid. I was clutching a very generous handful of conversation hearts and I turned expectantly to my sister, waiting for her advice and feeling a bit bothered that the candy was starting to get sticky. Somehow one of us suggested that we run to our parent's room as it is the only room in the house with a lock and I had the random thought that we should drag our dog AJ with us because I didn't want him to get shot. And so we hurried off down the hallway and locked the door while the pounding continued even more violently. "We should call Tara." I suggested, hoping my sister could help us out somehow as she only lived two minutes away. Katie turned on me and looked at me like I was insane. "We should call the police!" She snapped, and I could very much hear the silent 'idiot', she'd thought at the end. It was insane, my mind was totally and completely mellow. I felt like I was on pot (or at least how I imagine it as I've never used it). I was one cool cat, I was simply chillin while our house got broken into by a possible axe murderer. That's not to say of course that I didn't try to act. I did. I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon and the best I could come up with was a box of kleenex that Katie quickly rejected, looking at me like I was insane. Realizing that there was nothing and I would have to hit them with my hands, I remembered the conversation hearts. What was I going to do with them? I didn't want to put them down, the dog might get them! Besides, what if I didn't get a chance to come back and get them later? I did want them after all. Still, my hands needed to be free if I was going to properly defend myself so I did the only thing I possibly could. I shoved them all in my mouth. There was no way I was going to leave my candy behind! And so I followed my sister around the room as she frantically looked for something to help us, my cheeks reminiscent of a gerbil who had stuffed a bunch of tissue in them and looking about as unintelligent as was humanly possible at the moment. Katie looked for the phone, but it was cordless and someone had left it in the other room so we could not call the police. Naturally the pounding was continous throughout all of this, making her more and more frantic. Meanwhile AJ treated the situation about like I did, wagging his tail and begging for some of my candy, which I wasn't about to give him, even if I did feel like taking it out of my mouth. Suddenly we heard the front door slam open and bang against the wall rather violently. Katie turned 3 shades paler and the next thing I knew she was crawling on my parent's desk, sliding open the window, and kicking out the screen. She was already leaping out by the time I realized what she'd done. "What about AJ?" I protested, knowing the poor dear would never be able to make it out such a high window and we didn't have his leash anyway. "Who CARES about AJ!" She snapped, already rushing around the side of the house. I followed awkwardly, though my leg got a bit stuck coming out the window and I pretty much fell out rather than crawled. It was very wet and rainy outside and I had no shoes on, which I was painfully aware of as we splashed through puddles and ran through muck and pine needles. "My new socks!" I whined, knowing they would be stained now. She didn't dignify that with an answer but rather we kept running until we reached her friend Lindsey's house who lived a block away. We knocked on the door hurriedly and her friend' s mom answered, looking surprised. "Oh, did Joe not come home yet?" She asked confusedly. Joe. Our brother. Our brother who had been over playing with Lindsey's brother. Our brother who we realized then had been playing a prank on us. Looking absolutely flabberghasted (isn't that a great word?) we stalked back home to find Joe, looking highly amused and very unrepentant. He was surprised to see us though, as he had thought we were in our parent's room. When he'd finally "broken in" he'd heard some shuffling at their door and figured we were in there and so had held a short dialogue with what turned out to be AJ on the other side, informing him that he could come out now, it was just him and he had only been playing. Naturally when he only got scratching and heavy breathing as an answer he'd been confused, but being a stupid guy had not investigated. And so there we were, our brother had nearly been arrested (or would have if the cordless phone had been put away), our dog was locked in the room and we did not have a key for the door, and our parent's screen window looked like Bigfoot had used it for a piece of gum. Not to mention my new socks were stained and my hands were still sticky. Yes indeed, quite a productive afternoon for being home alone. Needless to say we all got in quite a bit of trouble but it was almost worth it for me to learn such a valuable lesson. I learned that I am completely and utterly unreliable! If a crisis ever happens you might as well handle it yourself because I'll be more interested in what to do with my twinkies than whether or not we should try to find cover from the tornado. It is a very sad flaw to have to deal with, but I am comforted by one thing. I will always take care of my sugar.