As this is, quite possibly, my mother’s favorite story to tell about me, I figured it was time to share it with you all. After my parents’ divorce I became responsible, at least in my own mind, for a great many things. As the oldest child of a family of latch-key kids, it fell to me to ensure everyone’s safety in the face of burglars, strangers, alien invasions, and fire. Though we lived in half of a one-story duplex with multiple exits, I was still very concerned with a fire breaking out and trapping us in our bedrooms. The rooms only had small windows placed high to the ceiling that were not easily accessible! Obviously I needed to make sure that we were prepared.
One day when my mother returned home from work, she noticed that my younger brother was limping. He was pretty physical for a kindergartener, always jumping and crashing about, so this may or may not have been unusual, but what was definitely unusual was the answer that he gave her when she asked about it. He was limping, of course, from the fire drills.
In a frenzy of level-headedness I had decided to run a few drills that included getting my two younger siblings to climb up some toys to the high window, and then jump out of said window onto the slanted metal cellar doors below. It went fairly well the first time, but we needed to be faster! Stopwatch in hand, I sent my siblings out of that window over and over again until I was satisfied with their times. Ha ha! Just kidding! I was never satisfied. We had to stop because my brother twisted his ankle.
According to my mother, despite my diligence and strong, outside-the-box leadership, this was not a good thing to do. So that was the end of fire drills at my house. But it was not the end of me feeling over-protective and worried about things. No, I still get to be that, although my siblings don’t appreciate it so much anymore. Luckily, I have two new test subjects that my wife and I created for just such a thing…