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 ...
3 comments:
beat the crap out of a fear -- put it to work for you ...
Reminds 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.
I 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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