Choose Your My Own Adventure

I realized coming out of Wal-Mart tonight that I have a deep-rooted paranoia that somebody is going to abduct me. You see, I believe it all started when I was a wee lass, when mommy and daddy used to drive me to a populated area and then take off. They said it was to "hone my survival skills", but doctor, and you'd better be my doctor because if you're not why am I paying you $250 an hour, I think they may have been trying to get rid of me, and I can't help but wonder if it was because I was always begging to go to the zoo burning things down telling mommy about seeing daddy kissing Santa Claus asking to eat with the monkeys.
Anyway, enough of this psychobabble about why, the fact is I was always petrified that I would be kidnapped when I was younger. I'm not sure why I was upset at the thought when really I should have just embraced it. I should have ran around begging people to kidnap me instead of screaming in terror anytime I saw a White Van (Cue scary music, and no, for the life of me I can't remember why only people in White Vans were out to get me, but I'm sure there was an explanation, like maybe someone I knew was kidnapped by people in a White Van, but it's more likely something that I saw on TV. Hey, what color was the A-Team van?). Anyway, I thought that I had outgrown this fear. But apparently not, because two things happened when I was leaving Wal-Mart on this dark and stormy night (So what if it wasn't stormy! It was dark! Bad things happen in the dark!).
First there was a man walking ahead of me who suddenly stopped and started fidgeting with his pockets, like he was looking for something (A knife! I know it!). If I had continued walking he would have been behind me, and there was no way I wanted to turn my back on this guy so he could hold a knife to my throat and throw me in his White Van and speed away with me, possibly bringing me to The NeverLand Ranch or worse, the home of Renee Zellweger's bastard son. No way. So I stopped, too, which caused the person behind me to bump into me (yeah, there were other people around, but still, do you think serious kidnappers let a little thing like witnesses stop them?), but too bad for that person. I was saving the world here (Because I am the world, I am the children, I am the one who makes a brighter day, so let's start giving! And that concludes the musical portion of today's post, now back to your regularly scheduled blog). So yeah, a few moments later the man stopped fidgeting with his pockets (going for his knife!), continued on, and then so did I. Crisis averted.
But THEN. Then. What do I see parked on the driver's side of my car? A White Van. I think at this point I let out a little cry, but I can't be sure because all I could hear was the voice in my head (Charlie Dynamite Brown) screaming "White Van! White Van! White Van! Run! Run! Run!". And while I'm crazy enough to be paranoid about stuff like this I'm also worried about people thinking I'm completely off my rocker, so I didn't think dropping my bags, running, and screaming "The White Van is going to kidnap me! Help, Help! I don't want Michael Jackson to touch me in that special place!" was such a good idea. I instructed my brain to hatch some other escape plan all the while chastising myself for never finishing Gavin DeBecker's The Gift of Fear (The last chapter was probably the chapter on How To Not Get Kidnapped By A White Van) and promising to read it when I got home, if I got home.


Did I escape? Or am I writing this from a tiny cream colored room inside Renee Zellweger's satanic son's home?


If you think I escaped by pretending to call someone on my cell phone (what kidnapper wants to abduct someone while they are on the phone? No kidnapper, that's who!) and am writing this from the confines of my home where I am listening to Radiohead's cover of Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better", flip ahead to page 568.


If you think the White Van spirited me away to Zoo Boy's compound while I was attempting to put my purchases in the car and am now writing this from a 2x4 padded room with nothing but a monkey, a banana, and a TV that plays Jerry Maguire 24/7, flip ahead to page 641.


If you don't really give a damn what happened to me, flip ahead to page 666, where you will be tied up and forced to watch reruns of The Nanny for all eternity! With Fran Drescher sitting right beside you! Spoon feeding you! Spoon feeding you liver! HUMAN liver! YOUR human liver!