As a kid, I lived in constant fear of being kidnapped. I believed any moment a windowless van would speed around the corner of my cozy suburban neighborhood and whisk me off to a life of trailer parks and stained overalls where a woman named “Daiquiri” would force me to eat barbeque and neglect my oral hygiene. It wasn’t just my curly blonde hair and doe-shaped blue eyes that led me to only play outdoors between the hours of noon and one p.m. We were all at risk. My mom. My dad. My goldfish. If you so much as left the front stoop or got up to use the restroom at night, you had a ninety-eight percent chance of running head-on into a man with a ski mask.

The notion that the outside world was a dangerous place and hopscotch is a game for children who don’t like their biological parents was one I created on my own. I didn’t grow up in a region of the country where people were ripped from their doorstep and sold to the traveling circus. I’m not a long-lost relative of the Lindbergh baby, so my paranoia wasn’t passed down from generations before me. I was simply born believing in evil instead of good. Trusting that you never know what’s around the corner — but you damn well better hide from it.

I recall an incident in the fourth grade where my neighbor, Stan, almost kidnapped me. OK, “almost” is stretching it a little. As I was walking home from the bus stop, Stan drove up and asked if I wanted a ride home. Stan didn’t harbor any creepy neighbor characteristics. He didn’t live alone. He didn’t keep an emaciated dog chained to a stick in the front yard. And there wasn’t one “NO TRESPASSING SIGN” on his property. (Though if there was, my story would be better and my paranoia understandable.)

No, Stan lived next door to me for the better part of my life with his wife, two kids and a fluffy, white dog named, “Cotton.” I slept over at his house, called his wife by her first name, and shared one half of a friendship necklace with his daughter, Laura. But when Stan pulled up next to me that day, every after-school special I’d ever seen flashed before my eyes, and I envisioned Congress passing an Act with my name attached to it.

“Hey, little girl, you want some candy?”
(That’s not what he really said.)
“Oh, I’m not much of a sweet eater.”
(That’s not what I really said.)
“Come on, Lindsay, let me give you a ride home.”
(That’s probably more like it.)

I decided I’d rather face death than the embarrassment of explaining to my parents that I thought a man they trusted with a key to our house was going to kidnap me and keep me in a monkey cage in his basement.

The terrifying seven-second-ride home I spent clutching the handle of the car door. In my head I quickly calculated which “kidnapping escape route scenario” would be most appropriate in this instance. I had them all committed to memory, and I practiced them at night in my bed. Escape from a farmhouse. Escape from a moving sea vessel. Escape from those people that took Patty Hearst. If Stan tried anything funny, I’d institute escape route #247. Escape from a family sedan. In this scenario, I leapt from a moving vehicle, tucked tightly into a ball and hurled myself onto the pavement, landing on my backpack to cushion the blow. It was for this reason that I took extra books home from school every night. Stan pulled up the curb in front of my house, and I drew my hands into a fist as he leaned near me.

“Tell your parents, ‘Hi’ for me,” Stan said.
“Oh, yeah, sure.”

As I got out of the car, I felt a tinge of disappointment that I didn’t at least get to knee Stan in the balls, or use my Strawberry Shortcake lip balm necklace as a weapon.

Looking back, I can see that being afraid of a friendly car ride with my neighbor was a bit unwarranted. But, even today my stance on the world around me hasn’t changed much. I still won’t go running alone — even at lunchtime — in the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting. I check my closets when I get home for the boogeyman or Osama bin Laden. And I’m convinced a group of vagabonds are about to put a potato sack over my head, drag me from my family and friends, cut my hair into an untrendy bob and start addressing me as, “Larry.” Then, I’ll have to live as a boy in the foothills of some state with “foothills” without electricity — or a fashionable haircut.

Now that I’m about to turn 30, it’s time to quit being afraid of the big bad wolf or the crowd he runs around with. The reality is, I had as much chance being abducted by aliens as I did a stranger. Although your chances for alien abduction are around 50/50 on a normal day, 70/30 if it’s overcast. But we can discuss that another time.

Maybe we hang onto our childhood fears because they’re easier to face than the real monsters hiding under our bed — illness, unemployment, rude coffee baristas, contaminated salad bars, shark attacks. You know, the usuals.

I think we should let go of fear all together, whether it’s lurking in the darkness of our past or in the broad daylight of real life. Illness will strike no matter the amount of green tea we drink. Layoffs occur regardless of our work performance. And if you step foot in Florida, you’re going to get attacked by a shark — everyone knows that. The best we can do is get out from under the covers, and duck behind a hedge when we see an unmarked van.