One night in the early eighties, dad turned the family car (I think it was our Ford Escort) down our street, just arriving back home after a weekend visit to one of the grandparents, to find the road blocked by police and fire trucks. They were fighting an ongoing house fire in our neighborhood. We were close enough to see the glow of flames down the street, but not able to tell whose house, or if it could be ours (dear reader, it was not ours). The tension and uncertainty in the car lasted just long enough, that it imprinted itself onto my brain forever. 

From that day forward, every time we went away overnight, I would crane my head to catch the very first glimpse of the house through the windshield, to reassure myself that my house hadn’t burned down. 

That particular phobia and ritual occurs to this very day. Now as I take the right turn onto my street, and my house comes into view as I come up the twisty hill, I say to myself, and sometimes out loud, “Oh good. The house didn’t burn down.”