The Family Circus is a comic from the newspaper funny pages that has been running since before even I was born. I haven't read one for many years, but one from my youth has stuck with me, perhaps because I relate so well to it. It showed toddler Jeffy, who had just broken a flower vase, hiding in an open closet with his hands over his eyes. He knew he was going to be in trouble. His mother was standing in front of the closet staring down at him and his sister Dolly was there as well. She was saying to the mom that Jeffy thought that if he couldn't see them, then he felt sure that they couldn't see him.Sometimes I relate very well to that young boy Jeffy. When life gets too much for me, my first instinct is to run and hide. It is a form of protection and self-preservation. Now I don't hide out in the closet or under the bed or in a locked room. In fact I tend to hide out in the open, usually at my workplace, where I dutifully go about my business. I believe that I do this because when I am at work, I am most comfortable, most myself, most in control of my world. Work has been my hiding place for as long as I can remember. Yet, like that young boy in the comic strip, everybody is looking down on me, knowing all the while that something is not right, that something has been broken in my house.
