A tight spot

By The Town Crier

Everybody knows that a big box at Christmas can be as much fun for a kid as the thing that came in it. Crawl in it and it’s a cave. Stand it up and get in it and it’s a fort. Close the lid and it’s a hideout. Turn it upside down and you’re a turtle or a tank. I liked to turn the open end toward the TV and pull in a blanket. The ultimate 8-year-old bachelor pad!

My youngest daughter inherited the crawl-in-the-box gene from me. We have a family famous photo of her curled up in a tiny box when she was about 3 or so. Around Christmas or birthdays, if she disappeared, we’d all do a box search and eventually in a cardboard container as big as a microwave that you’d never think a kid could fit into, there’d she be, folded up on herself and grinning.

Because of this affinity for jamming herself into small spaces I’m thinking that she may one day be the world’s greatest spelunker (that’s cave explorer for you and me). But I’m equally worried no one will ever find out because she’ll go so far up into a cave where there will be that one tiny spot too tempting and like that famous miner ’49er’s daughter, Clementine, she’ll be “lost and gone forever.” Happy in her cubbyhole, but stuck.

As evidence for my prediction I’d like to offer her actions of this weekend past. At an out-of-town swim meet, while passing through the girls’ locker room, she spotted an open locker and, as she later reported, “I thought I could fit myself in there.” She did. And then she asked her older sister to shut the door. Sister did. Then she laughed at her success and said, “Open the door.” It wouldn’t. She was wedged in so tight that the pressure from her body was pushing against the release and keeping it from, well, releasing. One of the other girls got my wife, who was coaching at the time, who got the lifeguard, who got one of the ladies running the meet who got the maintenance man who cleared everybody out of the girls locker room so he could go in, and on the third mighty blow knocked the latch open. The older, door-closing sister had kept quiet the whole time, although her eyes were wide enough to get her an exhibit at Ripley’s Museum. The younger exited the confines of the locker and thanked her rescuer profusely. She knew she should NOT have done what she did because A) she’s old enough that she’s in middle school now and B) she’d ALREADY LOCKED HERSELF IN A LOCKER ONCE BEFORE!

A year or year and a half ago she was in a different ladies locker room and felt the irresistible siren’s call of a tiny, open space and climbed in. Since no sister was around, she pulled the door shut herself. Since no one else was around, no one could hear her yelling “Get me out of here!” when she realized the locker door didn’t open from the inside. When one of the kids did discover her, they went for help and once she was out she said she had learned her lesson and vowed never to do that again. In light of her most recent locker-room locker lock-in, she evidently was referring only to locker No. 418 in that one particular changing room.

After hearing this latest misadventure confession my instinctive training kicked in. And by that I mean the 16mm safety films and public service commercials they used to show when I was a kid. I instantly recalled that for years they would show us a classroom film of some kid finding an old refrigerator or freezer out in the woods and the kid would climb in for a laugh and then the big handle door latch that they used to have on those 1950s and early ’60’s Frigidaires would slam shut. And the classroom would grow very quiet. I only remember seeing a few of those type refrigerators myself. Usually out in the garage as a second fridge where Cokes and fishing bait were kept. But to watch these films, you’d think the forests were filled with them, and just waiting to catch an unsuspecting kid out in the woods with ironed blue jeans (like the kid in the film) just looking for kicks.

I told my daughter about these “old refrigerator of death” movies they used to show us. Of course she had no idea what I was talking about since it only takes the cat walking across the floor for our refrigerator door to swing open from its little rubber seal. She did seem interested however when I told her about some of the other warning messages I used to get as a kid her age.

I can just remember a billboard about where Emery intersects with South Hamilton Street that said “Moonshine Kills.” I tell that to some of my non-Dalton, big-city friends and they can’t believe it. They think booze came in nationwide with FDR. But I tell them that it was still up to states and counties to vote in alcohol. Just think, without dry counties in the South Burt Reynolds would never have had a career and the fashion world wouldn’t have “Daisy Dukes” because there would have been no basis for the “Dukes of Hazard” show. I also remember the warning that moonshine would make you blind. Only as an adult did I learn it’s because they would use old car radiators for the still without washing out the anti-freeze first.

There were package stores around here back then where beer was sold. They were small places with names like “The Office,” and “Tick Tock” and “Behind the Hedge.” I think you could get a little something in the back room of the Moose Lodge as well, if you knew the handshake. I had an uncle that was a Moose but it was against the rules to teach the handshake to 6 year olds like me.

Another warning I remember was the first anti-smoking ad I recall seeing. It was this cheap little commercial with an unknown actor and a kid walking around while a handheld camera filmed the dad throwing a rock in the lake and then the kid would ape him. Then the dad would do something else and the kid would copy that. Obviously winded from all this physical exertion, the dad would sit down under a tree and light up a cigarette, unfiltered I bet. Then the little kid would pick up the pack and look at it longingly like, “one day I’M gonna be a four-pack-a-day man, just like dad.” The announcer would come on and say “Like father, like son.” It had a catchy little tune that played in the background that I can still hum for you.

Right after that of course there would be an ad for Marlboro cigarettes with the “Marlboro Man,” a true American hero and star, riding out in the western sunset on his mighty stallion and roping cows and splashing through rivers. That commercial probably cost about $5 million to make with incredible locations and helicopter shots and stunts. And I can hum that tune for you as well, it was that stirring, heart thumping American theme music from “The Magnificent Seven” action-packed cowboy movie that basically made you want to sell everything and buy a horse and a six-gun and head west. And smoke. Cigarettes were cool back then. Uh… and bad. Really, really bad for you and that’s why if you’re a dad who throws stones in the lake with your son that’s better. Me and my dad were zero-pack-a-day guys, thank goodness.

Lately there’s been a lot of buzz about a British ad that’s very violent and graphic about teens texting while driving. It shows step by step the crash and injuries that result. I recall an old ad here that carried a double warning. The first part was something nobody thinks about anymore, because nobody does it anymore. (Well, I do know of one person in Dalton that still does it, but I’m not going to tell you who she is because you’ll take advantage.) And that is leaving your keys in your car when you park and go in somewhere. I wasn’t old enough to drive at the time so the whole commercial seemed moot to me, but in it there was a group of teens walking down the street and they see a car with the keys hanging in the ignition. They take the car out for a spin, or “joyride” as the commercial called it. The second warning was when one of the kids in the backseat leans up and puts his hands over the drivers eyes, you know, for kicks, and then the kid would veer head on into an oncoming car. The commercial would cut before impact but the warning was “don’t leave your keys in your car.” Since the message was aimed at the car owner, I guess the point was to scare you into thinking your car would get crashed by these crazy teenagers. As for the hands over the eyes of the driver business, I might only be 6 and not know the Moose Lodge secret handshake, but I sure as Pete knew better than to pull that stunt.

I’m thinking of calling my youngest daughter Half-Houdini for her antics. Not because she’s short, but because she’s only got half his act down. Houdini wasn’t famous as a “trapped artist”; he was an “escape artist.” Anybody can get stuck in a trap, whether it’s smoking, or drinking or joyriding. Or, yes, locker room lockers. Houdini knew the trick is to get out. Or maybe the real trick is to not get stuck in the first place. Somebody make an anti-locker commercial please. I’ll hum the tune.