I am about to share with you a very embarrassing story that I have been told, more than once, is objectively funny. Prepare yourself. With that in mind, I would like you to know that it ranks as one of the worst nights of my life, the memory of which has haunted me over the years that have followed.
When I was a kid, I was a bit of a trouble maker. If someone didn’t want me to do something, I would go out of my way to do it. I was always pushing the limits and seeing how close I could bend the rules before they snapped. I must have given my poor mother many a headache. One night, when I was probably about three, I did something I knew I shouldn’t have. In the middle of the night, I snuck downstairs and into the garage, my dad’s sacred place where the kids were never, ever allowed. It was like a house of mysteries in there, things I didn’t know the words to describe, aluminium accessories that seemed like wonders in the moonlight. My father had forbidden me to play with his aluminium toolbox after I jammed my finger in there and lost a nail.
I haven’t the faintest clue what possessed me to begin to climb over the objects in that shed. Curiosity? Over-hyperactivity? Perhaps. Maybe I just wanted to flout the rules to a further extent than I had already managed to do. All I know is that I climbed into dad’s enormous tool box without really thinking twice. I fit nice and snugly, and after a moment of enjoying the sensation of being buried alive, I decided to get back out and continue exploring. What I hadn’t counted on, however, was the tool box central locking system. I was shut in with no escape. It was hours before when my parents finally found me, freezing and in tears. I had nightmares about being in that aluminium tool chest for weeks.
