When I was a little girl, I shared a bedroom with my Sister. My parents thought this “built character” (as if either one of us needed any more of it). The Brothers were next to us and sometimes we would knock on the wall to annoy them as they were trying to fall asleep. Fortunately Mom and Pops were across the hall and rarely heard our night-time shenanigans.

Both bedrooms I ever shared with Sister were on the second floor of the house, with a nice concrete-type driveway-thing on the ground below, a lovely spot to ride bikes, draw with sidewalk chalk, or set ants on fire with a magnifying glass when The Parents weren’t looking. (Poor Mom and Dad. Really, it’s not their fault.)

Unfortunately, between the two bedrooms for us kids, there was only one one fire ladder. It was stored in a dusty box under the bunk-beds in the Brothers’ room. Knowing that my Brothers would be safe should a fire engulf our bedrooms was a cause of stress for me as I lay awake some nights thinking of contingency plans so that Sister and I could escape our bedroom if the whole house caught on fire.

My top ideas were:

• Break the mattress and throw it on the ground. Throw Sister out the window and then jump after her. (Mind you, I was probably 10 at this time and very scrawny for my age. But sometimes I’d test out my mattress-lifting skills just to confirm that I really could lift it in case of an emergency.)
• Tie bedsheets together and climb down from the window to the cement below, hoping that I tied a good enough knot on the end of the bedpost so we wouldn’t fall to our deaths. Again, Sister would have to go first.
• Throw all our pillows, bedsheets, comforters, and stuffed animals down on the ground. Then jump. Sister first, of course.

Of course, I probably could have asked my parents to buy another fire ladder, but I thought they seemed really expensive and felt guilty asking them to buy one…so I never did. I just designed elaborate escape routes “just in case”. I also had a list of what items I would throw out the window to try to save from the burning house. (My Blankie, of course, was #1 on the list. I had Sister’s Flower Baby too, but it was further down on the list of Important Things To Try To Save.)

For some reason I was telling this to Joey last night as we were brushing our teeth.

“You have been making contingency plans your entire life, haven’t you,” Joey said.

“Um….nuts, yes, I have.”

So that’s that. I’m a worst-case scenario planner and I started at a ridiculously early age.