“I was scared speechless,” said a friend recounting a harrowing experience.

No one could be that scared, I thought. Until I encountered the freight train engine.

One summer, the family traveled through a Midwest farm town with multiple sets of railroad tracks. One set had a crossing signal that stopped traffic for a passenger train. The other tracks headed to the local granary, livestock chutes, and various farm-related loading docks. Not familiar with multiple sets of tracks, our driver cautiously bumped over a couple sets, then slowed. Sitting in the front passenger seat, I looked to the right. A freight train engine slowly appeared — so close one could count bug splatters.

I tried to tell the driver to speed up but all I could do was babel. “Aughdbdaaa!”

Somehow, we cleared the train tracks without the train peeling off car paint. I sat catatonic for a couple hours.

Next, a storm on a hot summer’s night. The word “storm” doesn’t do it justice. The lightning sizzled like a hundred arc welders. A clap of thunder like a squadron of jets breaking the sound barrier. I leaped to my window, spotted a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be … St. Nick? Which shows just how confused I was after leaping up from a sound sleep and unable to speak except babble. “Aaughalagaaa!”

While traveling on my VLB (very low budget) travel plan, I visit arboretums and museums. I’m not sure how I happened to choose the Museum of Communism in Eastern Europe. Having been raised during the Cold War, I found the exhibits of period phones, kitchenware, clothes, etc. interesting. Posters of musclebound women working in grain fields came next.

Museum staff slowly joined me. I decided I’d seen enough.

“I’m leaving,” I said after a staff person stopped by, looking like an evil character in a black-and-white spy film.

“You can’t leave until you go down this hall,” said a hefty woman.

The hall — a dead end! I’ve been encouraged to always know your exit.

My memory gave me the jitters — I’d read where tunnels connected to several houses.

The staff blocked me from heading to the door.

In this moment of standoff, a family entered the museum.

No concern about being rude, I said, “I want out and I want out NOW!”

The family stood hesitantly looking around.

I marched out the door and didn’t look back.

I didn’t reveal where I had been so the staff couldn’t track me down and burn flags on my lawn.

The next incident I classify as “irrational fear.” The location: Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Driving from Warsaw to Krakow with a small tour group who hadn’t known each other previously, the van driver stopped at the Holocaust site.

The stopover somber. A tender, disturbing display of victims’ shoes: men’s working boots, women’s dress shoes, children’s play shoes, baby booties. I paused at a display of books of family remembrances. Others in the group continued on to a tour.

A while later I realized tourists were thinning out and I couldn’t see any familiar faces. I went to the spot where the van was parked. The van was gone! No one familiar in the area. I’m abandoned! I knew my fears were irrational. I couldn’t imagine the fear of those years ago unloaded from trains, then left there.

A great relief. I spotted a familiar face and the van driver.

“I moved the van,” said the driver. “Hop in, we’re ready to leave.”

Other scary times. Lost down a dark alley with my parents and younger brothers while on vacation. Dad asked directions at a dingy shop. Something frightened my parents and they scooped us up and headed out. I never knew what they saw. I’d never seen my parents frightened like that. The incident fed me nightmares for years.

Then there was the carpet salesman near the Sahara Desert. He didn’t realize that tourists who travel on the VLB (very low budget) travel plan might admire a hand-loomed wool rug, but no matter how persistently the salesperson chases them around the country, those tourists never buy.

Time to wind down and think pleasant thoughts before bedtime.

Children in their jammies, snuggled in their blankies, clutching favorite storybooks …