Friday, June 15, 2007
Sure Things Go "Bump" in the Night
I think I know why traditionally monsters exist in the night. But what I don’t know is why I am so much braver at night than during the day.
After dark, if something disturbs me, I will take brave, quick action without contemplation. There will be no pause to wonder if my actions will be well received, if they are politically correct, or if those actions will be viewed with disdain by others. And when I decide to write something at two in the morning, no matter how unorthodox that writing, (like this rant I'm writing right now), I bravely conclude, without question, that it makes good rational sense and has the utmost cohesiveness and clarity. Even though, when morning comes, I will look this over again and find it is nothing more than a grand mess of disconnected phrases, nonsensical thoughts, and jumbled words.
Maybe my nighttime bravery makes sense. I mean if I were to see Dracula or the Boogie Man standing in a sunlit room, I don’t know about you, but I would certainly run for cover. But if I saw these same creatures in a thin insipid stream of moonlight at night, I would just laugh and tell them point blank, “You don’t scare me.” (The reason being that in darkness, nothing is clearly visible, so I immediately chalk everything up to imagination).
So I don't fear what I can't clearly see. If I hear unusual noises at night, I bravely leap from my bed to go and investigate. I will let Hub sleep while I go to check out the back yard and wander through pervading darkness without alarm. Not so in daylight. That's entirely another matter.
If I hear uncommon noises in the garage or basement during the day, I am not wanting to investigate. There will be no investigation by me. Hub will have to check it out. Maybe it all boils down to the silly notion that “if I can see IT, then IT can see me.’
But at night I can easily rationalize anything. The creak in the floor and the noise in the wall is the house settling, the whining noise in the yard is simply the wind, the noise in the attic a wayward bird or small wood-boring insect. But these same sounds during the day are disturbing – too disturbing for me to even want to investigate.
Guess I was raised to believe and expect things go bump in the night.
You can turn off the flashlight now and go to your tent. Cause that's my scary campfire tale for tonight.
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2 comments:
Isn't that interesting - what I can't see scares me more but that's because it's DARK! I can't pinpoint the exact time I learned to be afraid of the dark instead of welcoming it, but I find your reverse fear fascinating.
I guess my training in bravery came as a child. I would walk to the neighbors a mile down the road and then stay so long that when I walked home it was so inky black I literally had to feel the road with my feet -- gravel crunch was the road, tall grass the ditch. Guess the experts are right that to conquer fear we need to expose ourselves to our fears.
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