Disneyworld, Lileks Style Part 2

James Lileks continues the tale of the family vacation:

When we ended yesterday’s entry, I was stuck in a small, crammed room in the dark at the Haunted Mansion, and remarked that I have been severely claustrophobic for many years. The various references to "the paper" or "my career" concern the trials of my employer, which began a several-year project of feeding jobs into the woodchipper right before I went on vacation. We continue:

The doors were shut and the lights went out and the room began to sink.

This was the test, in a way: the test of whether that evening attack in a movie theater in 1984 had any power left. I had my first panic attack — out of the blue, no hints or omens, ever — during a showing of "Vertigo." Honest. Rapid heartbeat, disorientation, fight-or-flight, the entire suite of symptoms at once. While I had to commend my condition for choosing an apt moment to assert itself, it also meant I had a difficult time convincing the emergency room nurse I wasn't just reacting to a well-crafted thriller. But it happened during the scene in the stable. Nothing was going on. Well, that's the genius of Hitchcock, isn't it? Even the most mundane moments are saturated with dread. Yes, and my shirt is saturated with sweat. Now if you could give me something.