The Monster Under The Bed

I was thinking about death the other day. Yes — I’m lighthearted like that.

Don’t judge. When you have crested the peak of your youth, you inevitably pass various markers indicating the descent down life’s back side — grey hairs, wrinkles, symptoms of menopause (ladies), erectile dysfunction (ahem…men .) And at this point in your travels, you have probably entertained the prospect of death a few times as well. By age 50, you’ve unfortunately seen friends and family die. You may have even had a too close encounter with the hooded, sickle-wielding emo dude yourself.

Regardless of whether you believe that our souls embark upon another journey after death, I think it’s fair to say that for most of us, getting to the departing gate for said journey isn’t exactly something we look forward to. Cancer…heart attacks…strokes…lung disease…dementia…diabetes . Buzz kills, every last one.

But I wasn’t contemplating those all too ordinary, mundane afflictions. I was thinking about death in a different sense, i.e. – as the monster under the bed — which is essentially the concept of death and danger from a child’s perspective.

Before our understanding of death wasn’t so achingly familiar, it took the shape of an unseen evil. If you’d asked me forty something years ago what I feared most, it would be death… the great unknown. It would be the literal monster under the bed. These days, the monster is more existential than literal, but the fear is still very real.

To a child, death is fantastical. It doesn’t dwell in sterile hospital corridors or dusty bedrooms with the curtains drawn. Death is flamboyant. Death has flair. In my single digit years, I was convinced that when death came for me, it would likely arrive in one of the following packages:

Piranhas : I blame my brother for this one, and the hours he spent watching Speed Racer, which meant I did as well since – being bigger than me – he held exclusive rights to the television dial until either Mom or Dad got home from work. In this deadlier, manga-fied version of NASCAR, I quickly learned that finned killing machines could be lurking in virtually any body of water.

You could be taking a dip in the local lake, crossing a trickling stream, or even taking a bubble bath, and suddenly – like zombie synchronized swimmers – they would pounce. Thirty seconds of roiling water and blood-curdling screams later, and all that would remain of you would be your bones, picked clean and bobbing on the water’s surface like scattered pieces of white-washed driftwood.

Quicksand: Slate journalist Daniel Engbar tracked the appearance of quicksand in film. (Now there’s a guy whose past-times I admire!) According to him, I grew up during quicksand’s peak era – the 1960’s – when 1 out of every 35 movies featured it in some way. You’d think, based on its popularity, that we were losing people by the thousands to this granular menace.

Of course, like any wily yet wary child who has ever gone exploring — whether it be deep in the Amazon jungle or in the slightly creepy woods behind my suburban cul-de-sac — I was always on the lookout for danger. What appeared to be a puddle of mud only a few inches deep, might actually turn out to be a bottomless vortex of death . It was common knowledge that – once in the quicksand’s grasp – no one could save you. The more you struggled, the deeper you’d sink, until finally just your panama hat would remain, sitting - an ominous farewell - atop your makeshift grave.

Hot Lava: Again ( an ongoing theme here ) movies fed this particular fear. To be more specific, 1 Million Years B.C. did. Back when prehistoric cave women looked like a ridiculously hot Raquel Welch in a perfectly ripped animal-skin bikini. Back when caveman fought dinosaurs, even though dinosaurs were extinct over 60 million years before the first humans ever appeared. And – as if constantly battling dinosaurs and other prehistoric tribes didn’t suck enough – they also had volcanoes and their pent up anger issues to deal with. At any time, hot magma could envelope vast swaths of the earth’s surface, indiscriminately taking out any living thing in its path.

I remember the times I faced a similar fate . Surprisingly, it was a common childhood occurrence. At any time, the floor of my bedroom or living room could suddenly transform into a churning sea of molten lava. It could kill you in a literal hot second, but (as long as your Mom didn’t yell at you to stop messing up the room), you could leap from bed to sofa to scattered cushions to chairs, and remain safe from sinking into the seething cauldron of death — aka, rust colored shag carpet — below.

Flying Monkeys: Flying Monkeys were also at the top of my list, because The Wizard of Oz…duh. Granted, I never witnessed them actually kill anything, but they certainly did a good job of dismembering the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, which was pretty brutal to watch as a child. The Wicked Witch’s minions were also horrifying for several other reasons. They were blue, and wore red lipstick, which was weird. They dressed like cute little organ grinder monkeys in their caplets and fez hats, but anyone could tell by looking at them that those were apes, baby. Oh yeah… and they could fucking fly. Need I say more?

Killer Bees — The horrifying, yet inevitable arrival of killer bees was a frequently invoked fear throughout my childhood. Scientists genetically engineered these stinging mofos in Brazil back in the 1950's to produce more honey. And then … like what always happens in every scary movie — when will we ever learn?… Oops! Some idiot let them escape.

I figured the killer bees would arrive in a massive black cloud darkening the Southern California sky, preceded by an ominous, buzzing rumble, like thunder. People would run screaming for cover, bees mercilessly dive-bombing them like kamikaze pilots. Nothing could stop them. I shuddered at every news update of their relentless migration north – reporters breathlessly describing various killer bee sightings like they were witnessing the Rapture. It might take weeks, months, or years — but I knew that they were coming. And apparently they were extremely pissed.

Army Ants: Like Killer Bees, Army Ants’ strength is in their sheer numbers. The ant’s individual capacity for self sacrifice is its strongest suit of armor, when it embarks upon the take-no-prisoners, military operation of relocating a restless queen. When these ants are on the march, they are a moving river of black death. Anything that stands in their way gets devoured in short order. I don’t know about you, but I’d take one good chomp to the jugular over a thousand stinging nibbles any day.

I remember watching The Naked Jungle with Charlton Heston. In the movie, his character desperately tries to protect his Cocoa Plantation from a 2 mile wide, 20 mile long column of these vicious marauders. Although I was never a fan of Charlton Heston (did he ever have a role in which he wasn’t gravelly voiced, angry guy?), watching the movie, all I could think about was What kind of moron decides to homestead in the Brazilian jungle? Apparently the same guy who thinks he’s on an ape planet instead of earth, and the same guy who doesn’t realize that food called Soylent Green is probably not made from anything remotely related to soy, and might even make hot-dogs look fancy. I suggest buying a sugar cane plantation in Hawaii next time, instead of opting for the Darwin special, Captain Dumb Ass.

These days, I’m almost 100% sure my demise will not come from any of my childhood fears — although they could each certainly be the makings of one truly epic obituary.

The last time people died from a volcanic eruption was in 2014, when 57 people died after Japan’s Mount Ontake blew. I couldn’t find a recent recorded case of death by quicksand unless Ted Cruz drowning in his own bullshit counts. The last time a flying monkey scared me was over a year ago in Costa Rica, when they were howling, leaping about in the tree tops overhead and flinging their feces at me and some other hapless tourists. Not fun but not exactly life threatening. Killer bees? There have been approximately 1,000 deaths since the late 1950's. Nothing to sniff at, but as far as I know, they haven’t infiltrated my current safe, trigger-free space quite yet. Piranhas—meh. Maybe one death is reported a year, but even that number may just be manufactured publicity for the next Syfy channel movie starring Lorenzo Lamas or Tiffany.

So Brazil — Let’s talk business, shall we? Piranhas? Check. Quicksand? Check. Volcanoes? Check. Monkeys? Check. Killer Bees and Army Ants? Hell yes. You’ve apparently got all the bases covered. We can all agree that Carnival, your spectacular butts, and a never ending supply of Victoria Secret Angels earns you a certain amount of goodwill from the folks up north. But really — enough is enough. Time to ease up on those monsters under the bed.

Sincerely,

My Six Year Old Self