Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. I learned many years ago that he was right.
There is no fear like the nighttime fears of a child, and mine were no exception to this rule.
I lay in bed, awake and trembling, most of the night.
Every night, my older brother lovingly tucked me into my crib-sized toddler bed. He covered me with my white sheets and pink blankets, tucking them closely around my body to keep me warm. Then he hugged me and told me he loved me and walked to the double bed he shared with my younger sister.
He always fell asleep quickly but I never did. For two reasons.
First, he snored. He made a loud, gasping, violent nasal sound all night long. But even though his snoring kept me awake most of every night, it was a comfort because it continually reminded me of his presence in the bedroom we shared.
Second, they were there. Under my bed. I imagined how they must look. They were green, like the Hulk, a character I had seen in my brother’s comic books. Their green matted hair covered their skin from the top of their skulls to their tails to the tips of their toes. But they were uglier than the Hulk. They were skinny with bony fingers and glowing skin and they terrified me.
I felt them tickling my back and my legs through my thin mattress. When they did this, I began to tremble more and then I wrapped the covers over my head and around my body so tightly that I could not move and could hardly breathe.
I lay there, listening to the raucous sound of my brother’s snoring and did my best to not let them know I was terrified.
In my childish mind, I thought that they would come out from under my bed and eat me alive if they knew how much I feared them. Conversely, I believed that if they thought I did not fear them, they might go away.
When I ignored their tickling me through my mattress, they became more aggressive. Then they ran their ugly scary fingers and toes up and down my body, trying to scratch my skin.
When I ignored this behavior of the monsters under my bed, they resorted to blowing air biscuits. They made sounds like “SSSSSSSSS” when they did this. These sounds went on for what seemed like forever. How monsters small enough to fit under my bed could have this much gas inside their bodies I could never figure out.
Did you know what a monster air biscuit smells like? A monster air biscuit smells like a combination of rotten barf, dead body skunk smell, and old beer all mixed together and simmered for about ten years.
When the monsters under my bed released their air biscuits, I had to take my head out of the covers for fresh air. The only problem was, the air was not so fresh there either. There was no escaping the wretched nauseating smell.
The monsters under my bed were very mean and stinky. They obviously hated the fact that I was sleeping on top of them. So every night they caused me to lay in bed feeling terrified and nauseous.
My preschool teacher had noticed that I tried to find a corner to sleep in all day long every day of preschool. So after many months of noticing this behavior, she finally told my Mother.
Mother responded in her usual way, which was to yell at me and try to spank me all the way home in the car. When we got home, I jumped out of the car and ran to my hiding spot in the back of my closet and stayed there for hours, pondering what I could do to make the monsters under my bed find a new home.
I knew I could not tell my Mother why I was not sleeping, that she would just spank me until she thought she had beaten my craziness out of my body. I thought about telling Grandma, because Grandma always knew what to do, even with tricky problems like this one. But I would not see Grandma until the weekend and I had to get some sleep tonight. The only other person left was my brother.
“Brady, I have a big problem,” I told him when I finally emerged from my hiding spot.
He replied, “I know that Mother is mad at you. What did you do?”
“Nothing! But every night I feel so scared that I cannot sleep. So all day in preschool I find a corner and take a nap. The teacher told Mother today and Mother got really mad at me for some reason. I want to not be scared at night anymore.”
“What are you afraid of? Maddi and I are in the room with you all night long. We sleep well every night. What scares you so much?”
“There are monsters under my bed. They tickle my back through my mattress and scrape my back and then they blow air biscuits and stink me out of my bed.”
He smiled with understanding. “Let’s try to scare the monsters. Come on. Kneel beside your bed with me,” he said as he grabbed his flashlight.
I thought he was very brave as he got on his belly next to my bed and encouraged me to do the same thing.
Then he actually shined the flashlight under my bed. You would never guess what we saw. We saw candy wrappers and dust bunnies and a few dead cockroaches. We also saw bits of plastic that had fallen off of the frayed tears and distorted curves and bends in my mattress that was obviously falling apart. But NO monsters!
Brady did not laugh at me when we found no monsters. He just lay there on his belly next to me, looking under my bed and scratching his head, trying to find a way to eliminate the effect of the monster fingers and toes scratching me through my mattress.
Then he went to the hall closet and brought out a thick green blanket with plenty of stuffing. This blanket was just big enough to fit on the top of my mattress when we folded it over four times. Then he removed all the covers on my bed and put this blanket on top of my mattress and made my bed again.
He promised me I would not feel the tickling or the scratching of the monsters anymore.
So I asked him about the monsters’ air biscuits, how I could avoid smelling those. Those biscuits smelled so bad that they could probably wake up my mother after she had taken too many sleeping pills or wake the dead in the cemetery.
He laughed and said those were not monster air biscuits, that my younger sister Maddi was made that stench when she passed gas. Her gas had awakened him many a night since he shares a bed with her.
Well, that night, Brady tucked me in as usual. And I did not feel the monster fingers and toes anymore. The monsters had finally moved away to scare a different little kid. The only thing that woke me up was Maddi’s gas.
Brady’s blanket had gotten rid of the monsters under my bed. And Brady himself got rid of my fear. That night he taught me that fear was just a lack of understanding about something.
Now that I understand what fear really is about, I no longer fear anything.
Sadly, my brother Brad is dead. I will always miss him, but I will never fear anything again.
So the next time you feel fearful, just remember what President Roosevelt said about fear. Then try to understand what is making you feel fearful.
Trust me, this really works.
Let the encouraging words in these near a river posts help you
soar like an eagle above life’s storms.
