It was a pleasant evening at a KOA campground near Jackson, New Jersey in 1975. Blinking on and off in the warm, humid air, fireflies made me think of fairies and at age 10, I imagined that my sister Mitzi and I most definitely appeared to be princesses walking through a magic fairy-tale forest. I was dressed in a sky-blue bathrobe and nightgown with matching slippers. My sister, just a year and a half younger, was a parallel vision in pink. We each had a towel, and I had my very own, new, soap-on-a-rope that sat nice and dry inside the white plastic container that had a hole in it for draining when the soap was freshly used. Under the moon and stars, the sleeping campground was peaceful as my sister and I took delicate, feminine steps in our soft, fuzzy slippers to avoid the larger, sharp rocks on the gravel pathway to the showers.

Now remember this was 1975, before Amber Alerts and TV shows like Cold Case Files and America’s Most Wanted. We and our parents thought nothing of Mitzi and me walking down the path by ourselves to take showers.

The KOA bathroom and showering facilities were like all the other ones we had visited, with cement floors and cement walls. Cement buildings are kind of creepy, and there was always the sound of something dripping and the smell of mildew. The toilets in their stalls and the sinks on their walls took even more chunks away from the fairyland of my imagination in which I had fluttered around on the way over, but that was okay. As usual, we tried not to look for cockroaches or spiders or disgusting hairballs left by other campers. Taking our showers and getting back to the motor home was the assignment, and we set about getting it done. My sister and I each had a dime and had become quite proficient at soaping up and rinsing completely, including using hair conditioner, within the five minutes of shower time that a dime provided. We joked and laughed. Of course no shaving was involved way back then.

When we were clean, dry and back in our sleeping clothes, we put our soap-on-a-ropes over our shoulders, which we protected with towels from the dripping soap containers, and headed toward the door.

Unexpectedly I had to use the bathroom. I mean seriously. I asked Mitzi to wait for me while I did what was necessary. We were always together so it shocked me when she said would not wait. I mean girls always wait for each other. Even grown-up girls! I think it is an instinctive behavior leftover from ancient times when females worried about running into, well… all the things that seemed scary back then.

Despite my pleas for Mitzi to stay, I heard the metal door creak and slam shut. My eight and a half year-old sister had abandoned me in the wet, cold, dripping KOA facility where I suddenly seemed to feel and hear every insect within 500 yards of the place.

It was so quiet, except for the sound of the struggling florescent lights and the dripping, the source of which could never be located no matter the campground. With a slight echo, it was drip, drip, drip…. drip.

Still stinging from Mitzi’s casual refusal to wait for me, I proceeded to gather toilet paper one square at a time from the stingy dispenser.

Oh. My sixth sense kicked in abruptly. You know the feeling. It is the terrible conviction that something horrible is watching you, lurking, waiting to pounce. I told myself I was being silly. Jeez. It was just a campground bathroom.

As I cleaned up and was preparing to stand and leave the stall, I felt it again -- that nagging, pernicious fear of nothing! This was stupid, but I could not stop myself from looking for the bad thing that seemed to be hovering nearby. As I started to rise from the seat, I also let my line of sight elevate. I looked up, tentatively, until I saw the absolutely terrifying face of my sister, with her eyes open wide, lips stretched out to display her grotesquely unnatural pose with gritted teeth – her hands grasping the top of the next stall as she stood on the toilet and peered down at me. She had been waiting for me to feel her evil presence. I still don’t know how she managed to do all of that without making a sound!

I don’t recall getting out of the stall, leaving the building or if my panties were all the way up, but I do remember running as fast as I could toward our camping space down the path, paying no attention to the painful rocks clawing at my slippers and bruising my feet.

Mitzi was always better at athletics. I could never catch her when playing tag or in a race or when I wanted to get back at her for tricking me into doing things like shoving a whole (small, but still) peeled lemon into my mouth and biting down. But this time, this one time, she ate my dust as I made tracks. Man, my soap-on-a-rope was waving in the jet stream behind me and I lost my towel. I learned later, and she still stands by her estimate all these years since, that Mitzi gauged my speed at somewhere between 35 and 41 miles per hour. It may be helpful to note that a cheetah chases its prey for about 3.5 miles at an average speed of 45 miles per hour. You probably knew that, but just in case...

I began to slow down when I realized I was near the motor home and starting to regain my senses. As I breathlessly began to pass a very large and dark mass of bush, my father, in a separate, completely unrelated plan to scare the bejeezus out of Mitzi and me, removed his hands from his eyes to reveal the glowing rubber balls he was clenching in place between the top of his cheekbones and his brow. Because my dad was cloaked in darkness, his glowing eyes appeared to float in the air.

My father. Daddy. He growled like a rabid grizzly bear and shortened my expected life span. How did I even make it to puberty? I don’t remember getting back into the motor home. I do, however, vividly recall both my dad and my sister getting into the coach, laughing so hard that some of their major organs were in danger of simply falling out.

When I calmed down, again, I laughed too. Gee, I wonder where my sister got the persistent urge to scare the living daylights out of me? If I had been able to remain cool and not react, she, and my dad, would have probably given up. But I never did and they never did until I was about 25 and told them the game was over and that they could be written out of my will.

My family loves to recount stories like this. Don't be concerned. I got in my own digs by way of more, shall we say, creative efforts. And it was all mostly fun and not frightening. But when I see a soap-on-a-rope, which actually I don’t see too often any more in stores, I think of my sister, hideously peering at me over that stall.

You might be wondering if I ever forgave her for that one. I believe I will just let you keep on wondering.

Natalie K. Munden 09/16/09