In The Closet

     Inflicting physical, emotional, and psychological harm upon your siblings, if not a genetic predisposition, is certainly an acquired skill of necessity.  Being the youngest and scrawniest, I was at a disadvantage both physically and mentally.  So most of my battles were of the hit-and-run variety.  A smack to the arm or back, and a sprint to the nearest exit.  Jackie was the opponent in most of my altercations, probably because she was closest in age.  That she had the cunning brutishness of Nellie Olson from Little House On The Prairie  more than made up for any limitations she might have had as a girl.
     Sitting on top of my chest with my arms pinned to the floor was a favorite tactic of hers.  She'd then follow that up with the unbearable pre-teen's version of waterboarding:  The sounds of a mouthful of accumulating saliva, followed by the torturous anxiety of seeing a gob of spit between a pair of puckered lips directly above you, gravity inviting a splattering descent upon your face.  That Sun Tsu never wrote about the effectiveness of this combat strategy is beyond me.
     Now one night after watching Stephen King's Salem's Lot on television, I made the mistake of mentioning how I was creeped out by the chauffeur character in the movie.  He had an eerie look about him.  All dressed in black, he had a sly grin, an evil sounding laugh, and dark sunglasses which no doubt covered a pair of lifeless, dark eyes.  Of course Jackie seized the opportunity to take full advantage of my fears, and went into psychological warfare mode.  After I went to bed that night, she cracked open my bedroom door.  In her best Vincent Price-like voice she whispers, "Watch outtttt!.....watch out for the chauffeur....he's hiding...in the closet!"
     Now at age 13, I was too old and too macho to admit that she was scaring the hell out of me.  I casually told her to stop being stupid and go away.  But she knew.  Like a dog senses fear in an unwelcomed visitor, she knew I was scared.  So from then on, Jackie would remind me every so often about who it was lurking behind my closet door.  Readying himself to chauffeur me into the depths of unknown evils.  "Lookoutttt, Johnny....he's there...in the closet...the chauffeur...!"  I could withstand the years of our fistfights, verbal spats, and saliva-boarding.  But the man behind my closet door--he stuck around way longer than I could tolerate.