nature strikes me--but nurture hurts more

The first time that my parents left me alone in the house, a violent storm took up temporary residence over our house. It was a weekend night. My brother was off with his friends who were old enough to drive but not enough to drink, but they did the latter anyway. Not that that particular detail has anything to do with this particular reflection.

The house I grew up in sits on a West Virginia hill. These kinds of hills are only called such because they fall short of the Mountains for which my home state is immortalized via the folksy stylings of John Denver. Unlike your average hills, West Virginia hills can make you think twice about "goin' down the hill to pick up some milk" after five minutes of snow flurries. It's icy, steep, and curvy up in 'em hills of West Virginia.

In 1984, it also happened to be pretty durn desolate on that hill upon which our house sat. Mind you, when I was 13, I had already become a favorably recognized babysitter in our meager neighborhood, despite the fact that I had never spent a significant portion of the evening alone in my parents' house. It was fine for me to have the life of someone's itty-bitty in my hands; but the occasion to watch myself simply had not yet arisen. My folks weren't very social. At least, not in the "Let's go to Marge and Frank's house for cocktails" kind of sociable people. They spent very few evenings "out with friends."

The electricity just went out. Just now. As I'm writing this. I felt the thunder in my belly. Two fo the dogs are barking and the other is in th . . . . Okay the lights are back on and the dogs suddenly stopped.
I'm going to finish this post faster than I thought I would. Not in the mood for focused reflection right now. Like that night in 1984, I'm home alone during a storm. Two more dogs accompany me now than did then. I feel safe. I'm fine really.

But I keep thinking about that first night. That first night I spent alone in that house on the hill. That house with a sophisticated alarm system. That alarm system that never failed to go off when the wind blew at a perfectly reasonable velocity. That alarm system security protocol that required the home dweller to recite a super-secret code to stave off the sheriff and fire department. That super-secret code that I couldn't remember when the storm hit, the wind blew, the alarm went off, the dog barked crazily, the phone rang, and the security employee asked me, "What's your code, dear?" The humiliation I felt when I tried to explain to the firefighters who drove all the way up the hill to save me that I was fine, really, I just couldn't remember the code. The hot tears that droppy-dripped from my cheeks when my parents and my brother looked at me with disgust. "We trust you to do one simple thing: stay home alone. It's unbelievable that people actually pay you to do this with their kids."

I'm thinking about the total bladder-weakening fear I felt when my parents left my brother and me home alone on a stormy night not long after that first. A night when the lights went out again. A night when my brother thought it would be hilarious--but good training (for me? for him?)--if he hunted me throughout my parents' 6500+ square-foot house in the pitch black with a butcher knife. I'm thinking about his warning not to ever. fucking. tell.