The rest of the time, other precautions had to be taken. If I took a running jump into my bed, causing it to smack into the wall with a house shaking crash, I was safe. Wearing socks with long pants worked, as long as you had been wearing your sneakers all day so that the sneaker smell lingered around your feet. If these precautions were not taken, you ran the risk of the Boogey Monster wrapping his ice cold fingers around your ankle and pulling you under the bed to suck your brains out.
I firmly believed these things when I was a child, and although I didn’t really say much about it to my parents, I was always concerned about it. In my mind, the Boogey Monster lurked under my bed like something from Calvin and Hobbs.
About the time I discovered boys was the time that the Boogey Monster disappeared from my mind. Suddenly I was preoccupied with something much more riveting, and much scarier. It was a different kind of scary, but scary nonetheless.
I had not thought about the Boogey Monster in quite some time. He has been on my mind lately. For some unknown reason, he has returned. He only returns when Hubby is gone, which means the rules have changed.
He is still warded off by the smell of stinky sneakers, but smelly socks no longer deter him. The presence of Hubby is enough to intimidate him into staying in his echoing cavern, but he can sense when Hubby is not home. It is at these times that he comes out from his lair to linger under the bed, waiting for the opportunity to grab my unsuspecting ankle and pull me under the bed to suck my brains out.
All this has gotten me thinking that maybe it is time to lay off the spooky movies late at night.
Of all the things from my childhood, why is it this that has to revisit me? Why couldn't it be my sense of wonder and timeless abandonment?