Imaginary Sleeping Aid

Whenever kids go to sleep at night, normal things by day will often times look scary to them in the dark. A sweater draped over a chair will look like a Quasimodo-like creature. A dresser with missing knobs will look like a disfigured face with menacing eyes that never blink.

For me, this experience was never scary. To the contrary, I used it as a pleasant sleeping aid. I found myself creating stories about the deformed creatures and disfigured faces. The stories would always be similar in nature. These "beings" always once had a great life in some distant, far away land. But due to a hubristic mistake that they made, they were banished to my bedroom as an inanimate object and only came to life in the dark.

Most of them would have enough courage to talk directly to me. They were always insistent that their time in my bedroom was temporary. They would proclaim that they have learned their lesson and would only lead an honest life of the noblest intentions once free. I had poor Maurie for 6 years. He was my knob-deficient dresser.

I never knew when I officially went into dream mode but it was always easy for me to fall asleep whenever I did that. Later on, I would purposely prop things up around my room to create new creatures and faces in the dark for my dreams. My brothers luckily never caught on to what I was trying to do. They probably just thought I was really bad at being obsessive-compulsive.

I caught myself doing this last week when I spent a night at my Pop's. It made me wonder if I should seek counseling to stop this habit. But then I realized that I couldn't because no one would then counsel these "beings." Instead, I have decided to pass this "talent" onto my kids. They will become great counselors to inanimate objects in the dark one day.