A Childhood Nightmare

Picture, if you can, a child of three or four during a time when Clinton was president and the Lewinsky scandal hadn’t happened yet. Videos of Disney classics such as Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella were giving me unrealistic views on men and Pocahontas had just been released. A Nintendo Entertainment System seemed permanently hooked up to the TV in the living room with such games as The Legend of Zelda, Duck Hunt, and Super Mario 3 were near at hand. Life, as they say, was good. So what went wrong? What was the catalyst that had me sit up in bed crying out in fear? Believe it or not, I think it all started when I was shown a classic 1940 Disney film about a puppet boy brought to life who spends roughly eighty-eight minutes trying to become a real boy. Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about Pinocchio.

There’s a scene in the movie where you, as the viewer, zoom-in to where Jiminy Cricket is singing as he stands upon the windowsill, gazing at the stars. Although I’m not sure of the exact song he’s singing, in my recollection he’s singing ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’. I mean, how non-threatening can a cricket get? For some unknown reason, though, this scene and how the viewer seemed to zoom-in to the singing cricket, would make for one sleepless night for my parents and one wild ride for a kid of three or four.

It was a clear night when this event occurred. I had finally settled down enough for my mother to tuck me in and read me a story. When she finished, she reached down and turned on the Crayola nightlight that I had beside my bed before wishing me a final goodnight and shutting the door behind her. Fact: As a child I was afraid of the dark. Even now I find myself quickening my pace to reach the light because of the unfriendly shadows sending a river of dread and fear straight through my heart. For this reason, and for safety reasons as it was later explained, the entire house had little nightlights everywhere. Nightlights in some cultures are considered to help keep the night, the darkness, and the evil that lurks there at bay – but on the night of which I speak, my Crayola nightlight did none of these.

I lay upon my side, my back to the nightlight as I looked towards a different light – moonlight, soft and white, bathed the room in varying shades of black and blue as it filtered through the blinds of my window. Toys and shelves became distorted in the light, taking on slightly menacing forms but it did little more than make my heart race before I laughed quietly to myself and reminded myself what was over there. It was a sort of game I played before I became too tired to think. What things did I have that I loved in the light that could make such shadows that loomed over my head at night? That night, the game lost its comforting feel as my vision seemed to zoom in on the windowsill to a shadow that I could not assign one of my toys to but I was afraid I knew what it was.

It was as if the shadow had read my thought and had decided to rub in the fact that it was indeed a cricket because it moved forward into the moonlight and stayed there, poised on the edge of the windowsill. It seemed to have its own magical quality about it because even in the moonlight, its black body seemed to gleam in a way that made me sickeningly aware of the antennas protruding from its small head, the way its legs seemed poised for a jump. The fact that it was there was enough to make me anxious and have my stomach doing acrobatic tricks but it was what it did next that made me sit upright in bed and start shrieking and crying. It opened its mouth and sang.

My parents, of course, came running in through the adjoining door, my father leading the way as my mother reached for the light switch. They both looked around before sitting on the bed to console me, all the while trying to figure out what happened to put me in the state I was in. Once I was able to explain past the tears and the hiccups, my dad looked around the room for a while, even under my bed, but he couldn’t produce the cricket culprit. After a few hollow statements on how they believed me and that it’s alright now, my parents tucked me back into bed and retreated wearily to their room. Unfortunately, as I lay upon my side, my vision zoomed in again and the cricket made his reappearance and resumed his performance.

Again, my parents came running and when I kept pointing to the window, unable to make it clear through the tears that the cricket was back, my father put two and two together in his sleep befuddled mind and made another round of my room, looking for the fictional cricket. Not wanting the cricket to make a third showing, my father picked me up and put me in his bed, saying that he and my mother would sleep in my room and wait for the cricket to come back. Drained from making such a fuss so late into the night, I curled up sleepily under their covers as they wished me good night, turned out the lights and went into my room to sleep.

Turning my back to the door, I lay facing the windows in their room, the moonlight a little lighter than before as the moon made its way across the heavens. Everything seemed bigger and stranger in their room, a little bit scarier too, but I didn’t care. As long as the cricket didn’t make an appearance on the windowsill in their room, which I watched in wary and weary anticipation, all would be well. I suppose if I hadn’t been expecting it that the round black body of a spider dropping down onto the windowsill from a nearly invisible thread before stepping forward into the moonlight with her many legs would have seemed frightening. As it was, the spider that sat on the corner of their windowsill comforted me and told me a story that to this day, I’m unable to recall the details of. All I remember thinking as I drifted off to sleep was ‘At least it isn’t that scary cricket.’