Our theme for the month of October is “childhood fears.”
My fear of doors and my bent towards catastrophe probably manifested from the airplane toilet incident.
Tiny Shuāng. Big airplane. Tiny bladder. I marched into the closet-stall, where the plane is suddenly much too loud, and the quarters are just a little too close, even for the size I was.
Tiny Shuāng. Big door. Very big, very stuck door.
A few travel parenting tips: Don’t make your kids watch Cast Away before a flight. Don’t joke about the possibility of getting sucked into the toilet in the event something falls in and you try to reach for it, even if the mechanics of a vacuum flush are cool.
It didn’t take long for the panic to set in. I couldn’t get the door to spring open no matter how hard I shoved it, and by the time it finally released me, I was close to tears. Every possible scenario had already flashed before my eyes, and each timeline ended with the conclusion that I was going to die in an airplane bathroom.
But that fear of being trapped was so visceral that even now, anytime I feel my grip on a situation slipping, the old panic creeps up and sours the back of my throat. The absolute worst part of it was my helplessness. What can I say? I’ve been a control freak since birth.
There’s an old Chinese proverb, 井底之蛙 (jǐng dǐ zhī wā); the frog at the bottom of a well. This frog, as the story goes, spends his entire life enjoying his domain inside a well, unknowingly trapped in the confines of its high walls. The horror sets in when others passing over his kingdom tell him of the world’s vastness, and the realisation of his confines put an end to his boasting.
It’s meant to be a lesson about pride: the dangers of big-fish (frog?)-small-pond (well?)-ing. But I tend to think of the frog’s despair in relation to his imprisonment in the same way I think about my panic of being locked in a latrine against my will. The fact that I felt there was nothing I could do about the situation. It felt paralysing. It still does.
I often forget the most crucial part of the airplane toilet incident. When I inevitably had to pee again, my father led a reluctant, red-faced, tiny Shuāng by the hand back to the latrine, where he slowly showed me how to slide the door back and forth. Not jammed, he explained. No need to tug. Make sure it’s fully unlatched, make sure to push at this seam. See? Easy. Pee in peace.
I still check the doors of new spaces I enter. I still constantly calculate my escape routes, whether it is out of houses, cities, social events. Though I’m not actually crippled by the fear of peeing on planes, I still find myself worrying when I stay in one place too long. I need to remember it is okay to wait. I need to remember, during those heart-stopping moments when the door jams shut, that I don’t always need to break out. I can simply be still and know it is my loved ones who stand on the other side of the door, ready to shove their way in.
Chantale Shuāng Van Tassel (‘26) grew up in Hong Kong as an American-Taiwanese TCK and studied writing, linguistics, and Asian studies at Calvin. A lover of tea and aspiring polyglot, she enjoys cooking for her loved ones and tromping around big cities on a never-ending quest for dessert and the perfect pair of jeans.
