No Takers

This is all I need for Christmas.

For a brief period in childhood, I had an obsessive fear that I'd be kidnapped. At some point I watched a TV movie about Patty Hearst that made quite an impression, but I think this predated it.

My mother did not share my concern. "Who would want to kidnap you?" she said.

To this day, I'm not sure whether she was stressing the first word or the last, and therefore whether I was being comforted or mocked.