"Nothing to fear but fear itself"......yea right

For a younger child fear can take many many forms, as we all know. From boogie-men to "the dark" children let their imaginations get the best of them when the lights go out. As for myself, my sub-concious decided that at night my closet would unleash its true potential. Much like the pixar movie "Monsters INC.", every night when the lights went out and the only illumination in my 10 year old room was the carlights outside the "thing", as I called it, appeared in the corner of the closet. I realize how cliche that sounds but it's true and, much like the "beastie" of "Lord of the Flies" it scared the crap out of me to the point of insainity. Even when I would wake up in the morning I would be too scared to find out what the monster was. What's worse is that when I did wake up I needed my change of clothes and where did they happen to reside but the closet. So as any middle american frightened child would do I ran to the closet grabbed my clothes and headed for the door. This went on and on for quite a long time as you might have guessed until one day I decided to go after the Thing instead of the other way around. Like most childhood fears it turned out to be something completely average, in my case a small reflective old lunchbox with power rangers on it. Funny right? Well i'm sure it happened to all of us. No offense to FDR but i'm afraid that to the imagination of a 10 year old fear itself just doesn't cut it.