The time when I legitimately thought I was going to die.
My family owns a beach house here along the Oregon coast. It is a place of refuge from the drudgery of daily life and the noises of suburbia/city life. The Ericksen's Beach Abode houses family reunion, birthday celebrations, and even a Christmas morning or two. We have created many memories and look forward to all of the memories our family will make in the future. People come from all around America to also take refuge and enjoy what our little beach home has to offer.
However, I am slightly scared of sleeping there.
My life is such so that I had to get used to sleeping in noisy situations. Oldest child, roommates, traveling, living next to a busy road, etc. In fact, I now can only sleep with background noise. I can't be the last person to go to bed because it's too quiet in my apartment/house. I sleep with the window open so that I hear the cars/dogs/nature noises. I take comfort in people snoring in the next room over. This is my problem with our peaceful beach house. It's a little too quiet for this city girl. No cars. Well-insulated walls. Quiet neighbors. Even with the window open at night, it is silent. That gets into my head and I can't sleep at the beach house. I look forward to big family reunions because I get to share a room with someone. Get the picture? If not, I drew some for us.
A couple of trips ago, I begged my sister and mom to let me sleep with them, but they are those weird people who like the solitude and silence of sleeping in the beach house. Weirdos.
So I sucked it up and charged my iPod, ready to create noise and sleep like a big girl all by myself in the White Room (it's called that because white people like to name everything). The White Room is the second scariest room in the beach house, next to the Red Room, which is freaky just in its name, but that's for another post.
Here is what normal people see when they see the White Room:
And here's how I see it:
The first night, I'm delaying my sleepless night by reading and following my family around as they get ready for bed, which is their favorite activity to do with me. I finally decide that it's time for bed and should stop annoying hanging out with my family, so I get ready for bed, which includes making a sweep of the room to make sure there are no murderers. You know, like every normal adult does. I'm half-bracing myself to see something in one of the nooks of the room, so you can imagine what would happen if I were to actually see something.
Well while I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, my loving mom and sister, who know of my fears and heighten them by forcing me to sleep by myself, decide to not only make me sleep in the White Room, but then think it would be funny to hide in my closet. So I come back from the bathroom, make my sweep, then get to the closet. I open the closet, and this is what I see:
I scream bloody murder, scramble like a skittish cat who can't get traction on the wooden floors, and bolt out of the room. I collapse onto my mom's bed, in tears, heart racing. My grandpa stumbles into the room, still working on his pants, ready to kill the person who could possibly make me scream like that. By now, I realize that the two demons in my closet were actually my super supportive mother and sister and so I start to calm down.
This is what they claimed they did:
..but we all know how it really went down.
Needless to say, I slept in my sister's room that night.
