I slept with a night light until I was ten years old. It was one of those little christmas-tree bulb things, plugged into the socket behind my little brother's bed headboard. Not much light, seven watts, I think, but I needed it.
I was afraid of the dark.
A vivid imagination is both curse and blessing. In the darkness, I could conjur up all manner of things to spook myself. If I saw a scary movie -- and I saw every one I could, sometimes doing a quadruple feature on Saturdays, riding my bike to the old Dalton Theater, a quarter for six hours of 50's paranoia flicks -- well, I would have nightmares. And even awake, I could imagine the creatures -- if the room was dark. Aliens, werewolves, vampires, shambling this, brain-sucking, oozing that, all just outside my window, waiting ...
Go to sleep, Steve ...
Eventually, I got past it. One day, I unplugged the light, and even though I still had bad dreams now and then, all I had to do was turn on my reading lamp to banish them.
And I really beat the monsters in the end-- because by making up stuff and writing it down and getting paid for it? There's a useful victory. That's the way to beat the crap out of a fear -- put it to work for you ...
As an aside, since I started writing, my dreams have gotten better, insofar as they have better plots, and sometimes even make sense ...
beat the crap out of a fear -- put it to work for you ...
ReplyDeleteReminds me of G. Gordon Liddy's book, Will.
Don't know if you are familiar with his autobiography. Interesting reading.
Yeah, I read LIddy's bio. All that candle-flame stuff, how to make a deadly weapon out of a pencil, how to get nicotine from tobacco to make deadly darts.
ReplyDeleteI think Liddy wanted to be James Bond, and he didn't have the chops. Listen to him talk about his wife, whom he chose for breeding characteristics ...
Nutty as a boxcar full of pecans.
I'm not sure what Night of the Dead or Living Dead movie - I think the were replaying it but we were around 8 or so -- a friend and I rode our bikes to the old quonset hut theater in Aloha Oregon and got into the theater - they didn't care how old you were - if you had the price of admission. We lasted all of two bodies or parts coming out of the ground aka grave and we shot out of there - I think it was still light out but home was on Sandra Lane and it sure seemed too far - but I must have beat some kind of record getting there. I am not sure when the grave people got my friend. When I was really young I woke up kneeling at the bottom of the stairs at home and looking up saw an ugly witch (not the hot kind) at the top of the stairs stiring a cauldren. I closed my eyes then looked again and she was gone. It took all I had to go running up those stairs past where she had been and back in my room. That was brave - right.....right!! ---- Thanks Disney!!!
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