Kidnapped and locked in a shed

Merging past and present experiences in Uster, Switzerland

If your email cuts off or doesn’t load all the images, you can view this newsletter on my substack website writerofwordsetc.substack.com. This is a member-supported newsletter and an optional paid upgrade is available.

The door of the house where my kidnapper lived opened directly into the street.

I always found this an odd feature of central European houses. Even as a young girl growing up in Switzerland, where these sights were not uncommon, I often wondered why a door would open out into the street and not onto a sidewalk.

Was it a space issue? An urban planning issue? An architectural mistake? Or did the street get built later, after the house was already erected?

This is a street from my childhood not far from my apartment.

Later, when I moved to Canada and visited Switzerland periodically, these doors opening directly into the street continued to perplex me.

Fun facts about doors in Switzerland (and Italy)

• I never saw a door knob, always a handle.

• Exterior doors often opened outward, particularly in older homes (but not always). This had something to do with snow or water on the outside, or fire on the inside of the house.

• People keep their house keys in the key hole on the inside of the house.

Childhood before e-technology

Childhood in Switzerland during the 1970s meant kids were outside most of the time. There wasn’t much TV, there were no video games or other electronic devices, and noise was frowned upon by adults. Even happy, normal childhood noises were distracting to anyone over the age of 20, or so it appeared to me. As a result, we kids played outside, rode our bikes, explored forests or creeks or residential streets. At some point in late afternoon, all the children would disappear, head home for dinner, seemingly simultaneously. Perhaps the time was announced by one of many church bells so prevalent across Switzerland, which announced the time with regular chimes throughout the day, or perhaps it was just an ingrained sense of ‘I’m hungry, it’s getting dark, must be time to go home’.

The day my kidnapper kidnapped me was warm and sunny, probably spring or early summer. There was a group of us kids hanging around, walking up and down the residential streets in our neighbourhood. When Luis and his friends approached my girlfriend and I, we didn’t think much about it. At our age, we weren’t particularly interested in boys and tended to play segregated, doing our own thing.

I can’t remember exactly how we got separated, my girlfriend and I, but somehow I found myself locked in a shed in Luis’ backyard. My girlfriend had vanished.

The kidnapper

My kidnapper was a boy of about 9, same age as me. He lived in the house with the door opening into the street (pictured above) and attended school nearby, just like I did.

Luis was an exotic boy from Argentina. He was dark-haired and taller than I by about two inches. I remember thinking the day he kidnapped me was the first time he ever approached me.

I believed the house with the door opening directly into the street was Luis’ home, or so he said. I never saw him enter or exit it, nor did I ever see anyone else in its vicinity. The garden’s fence was adjacent to the street next to the door. The day of my kidnapping, Luis led me through a gate in the fence and told me he wanted to show me something in the shed, so I went with him.

I was a trusting, gullible child, neither afraid nor apprehensive.

Once I was inside the shed, he locked the door from outside and disappeared. I heard the other boys giggling, but soon, it was quiet.

Living in houses vs living in apartments

I remember feeling curious about my surroundings while locked in the shed. I lived in an apartment building on the fourth floor and the only house and garden I had exposure to was my grandparents’ place, the same place where they raised my mom and her sisters. The fact that I was locked into a shed by a boy who lived in a house with a garden was fascinating to me (not terrifying).

I scanned my surroundings while I waited for something to happen, thinking about what kind of sheds I was familiar with.

My grandmother kept a tiny shed in the back of her garden, a dark, windowless space filled with rickety tools and ladders and covered in spiderwebs. It had an opening but not an actual door (or, if it did, I don’t remember). The spiders - a most intriguing arachnid - kept me out of the shed most of the time, but so did the musty smell. It was a place to explore occasionally with trepidation and respect but not a place to dwell or play in. My grandmother’s shed was a utility shed, a place where sharp, rusty tools might hurt me if I played in there.

The shed I was locked into was, by contrast, much larger and had glass window panes. It was, therefore, not dark and musty (or scary). There was assorted clutter scattered around such as gardening equipment and outgrown or broken boy toys.

I glanced out the window and saw sunflowers and roses.

Plotting my escape

After a while, I got bored. The boys had disappeared and I briefly considered they must have forgotten about me. I knew how distracted (and stupid) boys at that age could be. My first attempt to escape was to try the door. It was locked from the outside and no amount of jiggling made any difference. Ironically, there was no key on the inside of the shed’s door. I presumed they must have had a padlock affixed on the outside.

Next, I looked for a stone or brick which I could use to break the window through which I planned my escape. But something made me hesitate. I was raised to be respectful of other people’s property, so I held off on damaging any part of the shed.

I stood, staring at the flowers, and waited. The was no place to sit.

The kidnapper’s demands

After what seemed like a long while but was probably more like five or ten minutes, Luis returned. I can’t recall now if he had someone with him; if he did, that boy (or those boys) stayed outside of the shed.

Luis had a piece of paper in his hand which he gave me. It had the following almost illegible words scribbled on it:

Du must dich abziehen. (You have to take your clothes off.)

I stared at the paper and looked at the stupid boy in front of me. He returned my glare without blinking.

In my peripheral vision I noticed a few crayons scattered across some broken furniture. I took the sheet of paper to an empty spot on a wall, picked up one of the crayons and scribbled large, loopy marks all across the page and gave it back to him.

Luis took the paper and left, locking the shed behind him.

And so, I waited some more.

Uster, Switzerland: My former stomping ground

Uster, the town I spent my formative years in, had changed significantly in the 40+ years I had lived in Canada. (1980 to now.)

According to some random googling, the population increased from 23,000 in 1980 to over 35,000 in 2020. I’m not sure if this is a significant or moderate increase for a city this size. A train ride to Zürich’s downtown core takes less than ten minutes, which is why Uster was considered a bedroom community. People lived in Uster but worked in Zürich. My father was one of those people.

The city continues to be predominantly Protestant although a significant portion remains Catholic (11,890 Protestants vs 9,366 Catholics).

My mother’s family was both: her father was (Italian) Catholic but her mother (Swiss from Zürich) Protestant. Because it was the woman’s responsibility to raise the children in those days (1940s+), my mother and her three sisters were raised Protestant despite the paternal family’s protests. In fact, my grandfather had six (seven?) sisters, all of whom had strong opinions about Catholicism until one day one of the more vocal sisters met and fell in love with a Protestant Swiss man and ended up raising her two boys (my mom’s cousins) as Protestants. (Ha.)

I took a keen interest in the Catholic church in Uster during my recent trip and will be writing more about this ugly (to me) structure in a future newsletter.

Stay tuned.

Moving away as an 11-year old child in 1980 and returning only a handful time since then provided me with a renewed interest in observing all the architectural changes in the name of progress during this trip. So many of the beautifully designed heritage houses had been torn down and replace with rather ugly apartment building.

I managed to capture many of the stately family homes with my phone. A lot of them provided a sense of familiarity, almost as if time stood still. They acted as landmarks for me when I was a child; today I look at them longingly, wondering whether I will see them again in future trips to Uster.

What kind of families live in these homes? What did the houses look like on the inside? I may never know…

The kidnapper’s return

Back in my shed, I waited for the boys to return and to let me out. I started pacing, seriously considering taking a brick to break the window and making my escape, damage be damned. I was about to pick up some random sharp object when I heard the door rattle and suddenly, Luis and some of his friends stood in front of me once again.

He still had the piece of paper in his hands.

“Give me that,” I said and snatched it away from him. “I didn’t understand what you meant.”

Scanning the words on the paper made me realize they made several spelling mistakes. They wanted me naked? What was there to see? I had almost the identical body as they did, flat as a board with skinny arms and legs. I didn’t even have a training bra yet. (Was there such a thing in the 1970s? I don’t even remember.)

I was stunned with the obvious lack of syntax, then mad at their stupidity to make such outrageous demands. Inadvertently, I grabbed the nearest crayon and scratched out the ludicrous ultimatum.

“I’m not taking my clothes off,” I told them. “Let me out.”

The boys stood and stared at me. I in turn stared at them. No one moved. I considered making a break for it when I suddenly heard my girlfriend’s voice.

“Claudette, where are you? You’re mom is looking for you!”

At that moment, perhaps upon hearing an adult was looking for me, the boys dispersed and I was able to walk out of the shed as if nothing had happened.

“Where were you all this time?” my girlfriend inquired. “Your mom is worried about you. She said dinner is ready.”

“I was locked in the shed by these stupid boys,” I told her. My girlfriend stared at me for a moment, then repeated how worried my mom was about my disappearance.

And that was that. Nothing was ever mentioned about the incident again.

When I got home I told my mom I had been locked in a shed by a group of stupid boys.

She didn’t say anything. And I never brought it up again.

I can only imagine what would happen today if a bunch of boys locked a tween girl into a shed and demanded she take her clothes off.

---

Thank you for reading my newsletter! In a previous anecdote I talked about Italy’s coffee culture and how I was frowned upon by a barista in Milan’s train station. To read this story, click this link:

Frowned upon in Milan: Italian coffee culture, Milano Centrale train station, lax border control and dogs in diapers

There are several short video clips available for more pictures and commentary.

• Snapshots from Milano Centrale Train Station - YouTube, Instagram, TikTok

• Frowned upon in Milan: a story about Italian coffee culture - YouTube, Instagram, TikTok

• A very happy and noisy beagle reunion: Tucker’s ecstatic response when I returned home after two weeks away) - YouTube, Instagram, TikTok

Check out my Pinterest for pins about Substack, my books and related interests.

Like this newsletter? Subscribe and never miss an update. I publish minimum once a week, occasionally twice.

To show your support, share this publication or post with your friends and family. It would mean a lot to me to grow my subscription with your help.

Thank you for reading. All my content is streamlined on my website.