Being followed by ghosts and skeletons

It was about 1968 and I was about ten. I lived with my parents, younger sister and brother on a street about 30 min. from NYC in Ceder Grove, NJ. On one side of our house was the vacant wooded lot where I frequently took a path from school and rubbed against the poison ivy plants without success. On the other side of our house was the Wren family. Mr. Wren was a car mechanic who once rescued my mother by pushing her broken car onto Route 23 where he had a red faced fit when she steered into oncoming traffic. My sister and I crouched down on the floor in embarrassment. Mr. Wren's pretty, blond, fashionable daughter was our babysitter. His cousin Irene lived with them and was unable to do anything except sit in the backyard and tell us strange stories. Across the street was a tall silent man who once chased my little sister with an ax. There was also a grown woman who my parents said was really like a seven year old who only talked about the many birthdays she remembered. The reform synagogue where we attended high holiday services and I attended Sunday school until age eight when I grew tired of lying to fellow students about our celebration of Hanukkah was near the corner across from us. The Rabbi's son was my age and sometimes nice to me. The minister's son up the street would play kickball with me and my best friend. Another boy named Shawn who liked to torture frogs once pushed me down when I was walking through the wooded lot next to our house and lifted up my dress while he and a group of boys stood in a circle around me.

Our house had four stories with one room on the bottom level where we liked to play games and watch Batman then The Monkeys. Once when Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds” was on TV I became frightened of our parakeets in the kitchen on the next level. Another frightening time was when I was by myself on the bottom level and looking for Mom going up through four levels of our quiet house. This was especially difficult because I felt the presence of a group of ghosts and skeletons following me up the stairs and had to keep looking over my shoulder. The last set of stairs that led to Mom and Dad's bedroom on the top level was dark. I looked over my shoulder one last time to check for ghosts and skeletons, then flipped on the light. A high pitched noise blared loud catapulting me like a rocket blast to the top of the stairs where my mother stood next to the vacuum cleaner.

I was about ten. She was about thirty-three. She turned off the vacuum cleaner and looked at me with a knowing smile. Then we laughed until our eyes were bleary and our stomachs hurt.