Here’s one of my own: Long ago, when the kids were little, we went to visit a friend of mine, Jane T. Jane, has one of those drop mailboxes that lead directly into the house. My son, Chris, who was three at the time, stuck his arm in, up past the elbow to wave “Hi!” inside the house…and couldn’t get his arm back out! My friend came to the door, because I had just knocked. She said, “Well Hi!” My response was, “Chris is stuck in your mailbox!!” “Are you serious?” She asked. Well, there’s Chris, yanking on his arm, stuck in the mail slot, and crying at the top of his lungs. “Wow,” she said. Well, we tried everything. We tried soap. We tried oil. We tried Crisco. As we were working, with no luck, the other kids, who were in the house, were trying to get Chris to be the Thing—the one that hands out the mail, in the Adams family, although we didn’t know this ‘cause we were outside. Our first clue was when he suddenly wailed “Nooooooooooo!!! I don’t wanna play the Adam’s family!!!” “What?” “Th..th..they’re t..t…trying t…t…to make m…m…m ho..ho…hold th…the m….m…mail and I DON’T WANT TO !!” his cries rose to a creshendo. “YOU GUYS QUIT! LEAVE HIM ALONE!” After about 15 minutes Jane looked at me disbelievingly and said, “Uh…I guess….uh….we need to call 911…?” I agreed. What else could we do? Jane went in to make the call. (This was pre-portable phone days.) Things couldn’t get any worse, right? Wrong. Jane had forgotten that she had been frying some potatoes on the stove when we knocked, and just as she connected to dispatch the potatoes started burning and the smoke alarms went off! At this, the other kids are running around the house flapping towels and screaming, “Fire!! Fire!!” Jane’s on a chair trying to knock the fire alarm off the wall with a broom, stretching the phone cord as far as it would go, while trying to explain to dispatch that “NO! There is no fire! There is a kid stuck in my mailbox!!” I heard all of that later. All I heard from out on the porch were the smoke detectors suddenly screeching and the kids screaming “FIRE! FIRE!” All that noise and Chris is freaking out and that’s when I REALLY got close to a panic! Jane’s house might be on fire and my son is stuck in the freakin’ wall!!! If there had been a chain saw handy, oh hell yes I would have used it! Right then and there! Finally Jane was able to quiet the smoke detectors. She rushed out to reassure me that the house wasn’t on fire and EMS was on the way. The kids started pestering Chris to be The Thing again. Everything was back to normal. We just sat, trying to comfort Chris. Finally EMS showed up, lights and sirens. Just sight and sound that was enough to calm Chris down for a minute. They looked at me and said, “Weren’t you the lady who….” “Just get him out!” I cried. I was not in the mood to hear about other past escapades involving my kids…usually Chris. They removed the flap, which gave him just 1/16th or so. Just enough room to slide his now-slimy arm out. As they were working I asked Jane if she had a camera. Jane is one wild and crazy woman. Much crazier than me, but she looked at me as though I was insane. She silently got her camera and handed it to me. SHE wasn’t about to take that picture. You should have seen the faces of the Rescue Guys when that flash went off! They looked at each other, telepathically saying “Did that woman, who was in a panic and ready to dismantle the house a minute ago, just take a picture of this?” Then, suddenly, everyone was gone and Chris was free. It was just him and me standing on the porch being touched by a warm summer breeze. The silence was deafening. I timidly knocked on Jane’s door again. She answered it and yelled “GET AWAY FROM ME!!!” The end.