FRIGHTENING

WHO ARE YOU?
This, dear readers, is an invitation to you to share one of your most frightening experiences. Here is one of mine. Several years ago, when I first started feeling senility breathing down my back, I had eleven cats. Even though I never talked to any of them, they each had a name, which I would silently recite to myself as they came tumbling through the door when I opened it for them to come in for breakfast. One morning I suddenly realized that I could not remember a single name! I panicked. Cold sweat started running down my back, and my heart raced madly. After a desperate effort to calm down, it took me more than four hours to recapture their names, taking them one at a time and struggling with all kinds of association, since many of them had names related to their appearance, like "butterscotch" for the tawny one. A trivial event, perhaps, but I will never forget the psychic horror of it. I look forward to reading about your "scare."