Don’t Be Afraid
The Scariest Moment of a Young Boy’s Life
Delivering the Morning Paper
Long before the sun came up, on a cold, dark mid-winter’s morning, a 10 year-old boy was up and about in the large, old house. He sleepily made his way down the creaky stairway from the second floor to the kitchen, turning no lights on so as not to wake anyone else up. He had a morning newspaper route of 67 customers that spanned 3 miles, up and down many hills in the South Hills area of Pittsburgh.
Turning into the kitchen, he made his way to the cellar door. Opening the door, he reached in to grab his paper sack and a coat, hanging along the stairway just inside the door. As he reached, he heard some rustling down on the stairway landing, then saw a shadow of movement out of the corner of his eye, followed by the scariest sound he had ever heard — a soft, deep voice whispered, menacingly, “Don’t Be Afraid!”
Scare of a Lifetime
That little boy just lost his mind, having seen his share of horror movies enough to know that he was in serious trouble, and had to get the hell out of there fast. He let out a blood curdling scream, dropped the coat and paper-sack, and high-tailed it out of there, making his way back up the stairway to the second floor, taking it 2 or 3 steps at a time. It was following him!
By the time he reached the second floor, the towering figure of his old man was waiting there at the top of the stairs in his pajamas, arms outstretched as he flew into those arms, muttering, “It moved — it moved, Dad. Oh my God, it moved”, his heart fluttering like a bird’s. Following right behind him was another towering figure, that of his oldest brother Jim, with a sheepish look on his face.
That little boy was me. That was the scariest moment of my entire life. In that moment, I was certain that I was about to die. My oldest brother Jim, home from college over the holiday break, had forgotten his key to the house, and let himself in at the side door, which entered at the cellar landing, when he got in late from visiting with friends. He’d made a little bed for himself out of the coats hanging around the cellar stairway, and was sound asleep when I opened the door.
He had sincerely wanted to keep from startling me, thus the whispered “don’t be afraid”. I’m sure if he’d never said anything, I never even would have noticed him there, and gone on about my paper delivery business. Instead, I got the scare of my life, and my family got its favorite story to tell whenever we all get together.
All anyone has to say, very soft and low, is “Don’t be afraid”, and the laughter rolls. However, whenever that story is told, there’s a little kid inside that shutters at the memory of how scared I was in that moment, my scariest ever, before I realized it was just my big brother.
