Funny how you remember things. I was probably only 2 or 3 years old in this photo, but the memory is fairly clear on why I look distressed and whining. If I have this correct, I was told at the time that the lights had to be out to take this flash photo, but I'm not sure if someone wasn't just screwing with me. I only recall that is what I was told at the time and it freaked me out.

The room was dark when the photo was taken, and even with others sitting right next to me I was losing it. Honestly, I was such a ninny.

It seems Dick and I shared a fear of the dark, and it's amazing to me that he could have endured sleeping in the bedroom by the garage when it was SO dark down there at night....and with the creepy basement and furnace of strange sounds RIGHT THERE. In the daytime that room that Dick and Ron shared was fascinating to me, but I was absolutely prohibited from entering their inner sanctum. They had those crazy beds that were not quite bunkbeds because the room was far too small. The effect was a trundle bed, with Dick's bed halfway underneath Ron's. They had airplanes hanging from their ceiling, and a hole in the ceiling tile above Ron's pillow where he stuck his hand or his head through one night during a bad dream.

I am probably the only one who will remember this, but a true test of fortitude and defying the fear that I harbored of the dark was to join in with Ron, Jeanne and Dick (and occasionally Eddie Willett) and play hide and seek at night with the lights off in the basement. I HATED that game and HATED that it was played in the basement, but to admit fear was to surrender to some serious mocking, and I did have some dignity. Once the "all in" was called, I would bolt towards the top of the stairs towards the light.....on the tailwinds of Dicky, of course, who never failed to be the first one to the reach the light. If you could pull it off, hiding behind the coats hung on hooks in the stairwell gave you an arms reach from the light of the kitchen.