There was a time when I was scared of everything. This feeling abated as I got older and was mostly gone by the time I was grown and old enough to realize the full extent of everything in life there is to be frightened of. As a kid I'd sometimes hug my knees and try to disappear, or I might hide under the covers. I didn't like uncovered windows at night, or being in rooms where the door was left ajar. Open, I could see out. Closed, I was safe, and I could hear if someone tried to come in. Ajar, someone could quietly push it open a bit and peek in and look at me while remaining mostly hidden, a sinister face in the crack of the door. How I detested furtive scrutiny, and still do. I hated blind corners, I'd always take a wide berth if possible. To meet someone suddenly at a blind corner, like of a building or in a corridor, would always cause me a fright. I'd be visibly startled, and then embarrassed.

So you could say, if in an uncharitable mood, that I was something of a neurotic child. I always had the deep intuition of being in the wrong place. In school it would take me a long time to get comfortable in a classroom because I was in constant fear that I was somehow in the wrong one, having misread a sheet or misunderstood instructions. The teacher was going to call the names and my name wouldn't be on the list, and I'd be summoned to the front and in front of everybody I'd be upbraided and sent to the correct room, where I'd have to slink to my seat while everyone in the new class stared and the teacher shook her head at my back, her lips pursed in scorn like she was sucking a lemon. This constant anxiety or feeling of personal wrongness persisted through most of my childhood, but I didn't have any means of verbalizing it. If it hadn't mostly gone away by the time I grew up I'd probably be a drunk now, or have some other substance abuse problem. Now, of course, I know how frightening life is, I know the terrors that await one just in the course of daily living or reading the newspaper, and they're much worse than simply being in the wrong room. But I can handle it, mostly because knowing about the actual terrors is preferable to ceaseless subterranean anxiety about imagined ones, and also because it would be too humiliating to admit I can't.