Panic Room

The LW thinks I am a history nerd.  I like to think I am more of a history buff, but at this stage of my life it is splitting hairs, and I can live with being a nerd.  One of my favorite topics to read about is World War II.  I enjoy reading everything about it, and find it all interesting.  A great author from that era is Corrie Ten Boom, as she recounts her time during the war in occupied Holland.  They had a secret room in their house that they used to hide Jews trying to escape the Holocaust.  
 

The Striblings have a similar room in our house, only we call it The Panic Room.  And though I know I probably should not be divulging this information to the general public in case the Democrats allow the Nazi’s to come back to power, I have a hard time not writing about it.  It is a place I dread, yet could come in handy one day.

I don’t want to give away too much information, but it is called The Panic Room for a reason.  It is tight, dark, and scary, and only good for dust mites, the boogie-man, and bad children.  The entrance is just tight enough that I can squeeze my head through but my enormous pectoral muscles get hung up and prevent my diaphragm from expanding.  Then I can’t get a full breath and the panic sets in.  Hence, The Panic Room.  This is compounded with the fact that in order to gain access, I must be on my hands and knees on a very hard floor.  It is an extremely awkward angle- my back is flexed in a strange yogo pose and rotated to the point that if I sneeze (which is likely due to the dust mites in the immediate vicinity), I will blow something out and have to be hospitalized. 

I, sadly, have just enough claustrophobia to make me break into hives and freak out should I ever get my entire body in.  I would never make it in there, and the Nazi’s would discover us immediately.  Then, we would have to shoot our way out, and our only hope of survival would be superior
fire-power.   

But, every now and then, I have to get into the Panic Room, and I only do it as a last resort.  The kids can get into it easy enough, and think it is fun climbing around in there.  I send them in whenever possible so I don’t have to dip myself in chicken fat and squeeze in. 

But, every time the television is on the fritz or our stupid DVD player decides it needs to be rebooted, the LW sends me back there just to watch me sweat.  I hate and fear it, and am beginning to feel the same way about the stupid DVD player and the stupid company that built it.   It happened last night. 

The baby sitter did something to the DVD player and it was frozen.  Little Win’s favorite movie was in there (Train Crazy Kids).   All of the kids were already asleep and in bed so they were no help.  The LW wouldn’t let me wake them up to come and fix things for me.  So, I dove in. 

The first place I went was the flashlight/ battery drawer.  In it, we have about 25 flashlights, most of which do not work, and about 100 batteries of various shapes and sizes, that do work and are rapidly burned through. 

I grabbed the fourth flashlight I could find as the first three were dead.  That is part of the beauty of a family of four children who refuse to turn them off when they are done using them to ward off the monsters in their bedrooms.  As an aside, I think the batteries in my house growing up lasted for 12 years.  I used them judiciously and rarely had to replace any.  The fact that my children burn through them like match sticks both irks and confuses me.  But, that will have to be the subject of another story. 

I then girded my loins, stretched, and prepared to battle my inner demons. 

I was immediately struck by the number of cords I saw once I torqued my body through the narrow opening.  There was no way of knowing which cord was which, and I was in no mood to unplug every cord and plug them back in to experiment.  They were all plugged into a space bar with one easy switch.  No brainer!  All I had to do was hit the switch, turn it back on, and I was good to go.  But I had a decision to make.  We were recording The Bachelor at the time.  If I flipped the switch and gave into to my myriad issues, I could get out quickly and safely.  But, I would also have to deal with the wrath of the LW for messing up her program.  Or, I could wait patiently for the program to finish, and repeat steps one through four, and start over again. 

I went for Plan A.  Sometimes it is just better to ask for forgiveness than permission.  I would rather deal with Bachelor disappointment than freak out and wake up in the fetal position under the kitchen table.  I also knew she would get over it.  I mean, where is she going to go?  We have four kids for Pete’s sake!  She can sputter all she wants, but at the end of the day, though she is a beautiful woman, our children have brought her stock down a little.  My own stock is not that high, now that I think about it.

Plan A worked beautifully.  Though we find the Bachelor spellbinding like a wreck on the side of the highway and lie if people ask if we watch it, the LW’s evening viewing pleasure is not predicated on watching every moment of it.  She was fine, even if I was braced for a worst-case scenario.  I only had to gain access to the Panic Room once.  And, Win is now happily watching Train Crazy Kids for the 60^th time.  All things worked out for the best.