The Lady in the Locker
essay

I can't do that trick any more. There's no longer any point in getting kidnapped.

I used to wonder what it would be like to get left in a school locker overnight. I was locked between the doors of two lockers once at high school. A so-called friend did it to me once, shoved me into her locker and pulled the door of my adjacent one past ninety degrees to make a "V" with hers, so she could fasten the two together with me stuck between. I kept trying to bribe people to let me out, but it was her padlock and I didn't know the combination. It got me thinking.

I mean, could you sleep standing up, if you really had to and there was no other choice?

If someone put me in a locker with my hands tied behind my back, would I have enough room to slip them under my feet to my front?

Was I, at my slightest, barely-into-puberty weight, strong enough to haul myself up and over the tops of the locker doors to freedom?

I was a potential Houdini when I was young. We all were. There was hardly a day that went by when my friends and I weren't secretly princesses, or tomboys, or heroes, tied up and left to escape by some villain or other. This of course necessitated learning enough knots so we could tie each other up. It is very hard to tie yourself up convincingly, even if you are Houdini's obvious successor.

Imagine, though, if I suggested something like that today.It's funny how much of what we did when we were little now comes under the category of socks in the kitchen sink – dirty laundry left somewhere inappropriate.

In those old games we were cooperative. We helped each other get tied up, but we also helped each other to struggle and eventually escape. The villains were make-believe, invisible. Ego and insecurity were not demons we fought. They were for the future.

We were sensible about things. We had common goals, common purpose. We had only occasional conflicts of personality. In our games, my friend Brenda always played the spontaneous one, the tomboy with the flare for cutting through to expedient solutions. She cut a broad swath of bold heroism while I went for mystery, for the subtle approach.

And we helped each other get away from the bad guys, and always returned together to foil their plots. And we always tied each other up.

If I was so sure and magical in those days, able to extricate myself so bravely from any amount of tangled cord or wire or skipping rope, the question is this: how do I untie a bond I can't even see?

Because the weight of what I don't remember what I can do is like a chain around my shoulders. It's heavy and cold and I walk slower and stand less tall than I did when I was a child.

There's no lock. My hands are completely free. It's like being stuck between lockers again, with no one I can bribe to release me because the one person who knows the combination to the lock has left me there alone. All I can do is hammer on the doors and wonder if somehow I can find the strength to pull myself up and out.

Does anyone here remember how to pull themselves through a circle of their own arms, and would they like to help me remember?

Jake and the Price of Cool

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