My older brother and I used to worry about the snakes, not monsters, under the bed. We’d take a flying leap from the doorway onto our beds so the nasty poisonous snakes couldn’t bite us.
While many childhood fears (monsters in the closet, monsters under the bed, etc.) don’t seem to be related to the everyday world, this particular fear may have had its basis in reality.
We spent summers at our grandparents’ house in the Texas Hill Country, where scorpions, brown recluse spiders, and fire ants are known to share your living quarters. We found, for instance, that it was the wiser course of action to check our shoes for stray spiders and scorpions before putting them on. It’s not that far of a leap from scorpions in your shoes to snakes under your beds.
When I was in third grade I was convinced a ghost followed me up the stairs to my bedroom. I used to run up the stairs, hair standing on end, feeling the ghost chasing me. (Never caught me though. I was a fast runner.)
I used to think that childhood fears wane as one grows older. Now, I’m not so sure. I suspect that what we fear changes, but that we still fear.
For a while I used to worry about flying on airplanes. Although I’ve flown all my life, there was a period in my twenties when I made sure I’d updated my will before flying. (The items listed in my will were all personal effects–who gets the 2nd edition Webster’s dictionaries, etc.)
As many people are happy to tell you, there is very little likelihood you’ll die from riding in an airplane. We’re much likelier to die in a car crash than from air travel. Yet I’ve never considered writing a will before hopping in the car to run to the post office and go grocery shopping. It simply hasn’t crossed my mind.
What then makes my fear of flying any different from my childhood fear of the ghost that chased me up the stairs or the snakes under the bed?
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