This is an anecdote primarily about guilt, perhaps the greatest cultural export of the Roman Catholic church. Make no mistake, I'm not trying to get all Martin Luther on you here, I have room for Roman Catholicism in my heart. I'm even willing to count it as one of the tenets of my personality, for better or worse. If the Beach Boys have girls, cars, and surf, God knows I have baths, corduroys, and Catholicism.
At any rate, I'll mention now that hide and seek unnerves me. The seeker is acting in this strange pantomime where the sought is forced to fearfully engage with the seeker's lonesome and unperturbed perspective, to squirm at their presence. Meanwhile hiding is like looking through your parents' keyhole. I'll shut my eyes, I'd rather not bear witness to the all-consuming terror of a fellow player's fervent, rabid search for man. I mean, what dogs. I made a point to choose spots that were entertaining to exist in, if for a stressful few minutes. The good spot in my childhood home was a sort of faux storage space in the right corner of my parents' room, a chic little place with a narrower entranceway than any other room in the house. It was a slender rectangular space with a circular window large enough to paint just about every corner of the room with the honeyed sunlight of summer afternoon. Inside we kept little more than a picnic table with, among other select tchotchkes, a milk-jug of industrially bottled holy water, expressly for filling the small basin at the foot of the master bedroom crucifix. It was a daunting space, really. Face pressed against that window, I felt like I was doing confession to the whole world.
Naturally I was taking sips of the holy water to soothe my nerves while being pursued in hide and seek. I felt it tasted a little sweeter than secular water, actually. In the moment I would feel refreshed and nourished by the good lord, but was of course aghast when I next urinated, what with me flushing holy water down the toilet.