Of the two biggest fears I had during my childhood, one was about a million times less troubling; this was because it could be defied by means of logical reasoning. I was afraid of being snatched from my room by a stranger—a human stranger. Consequently, I spent many nights—some of them hot, sticky summer nights—covered by a blanket from head to toe. I reasoned that if this stranger were to set foot in my room, he would not see me. So until I’d be taken into a more comforting world of thoughts and dreams, I would lie sweating and breathing in a way which made my body move in the slightest way possible.

The second fear was difficult to bear because I did not have a method of coping with it. I was never one to be cowardly, until (accordingly) it came to a single episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog. This is when I first encountered the character which haunted me for years following. After seeing this unfamiliar creature ONCE, I was not able to turn on the beloved TV without boiling with anxiety, in horror that I’d see it again. Even after more than a decade’s time, I cannot forget its purple hair, indefinite body, intimidating voice, and ominous environment.

This creature affected me the way it did because I did not have a way of handing it when it entered my thoughts. I could tolerate sweating profusely under a thick blanket on a summer night. I could not, however, stop watching TV. And the seconds of darkness on the screen in between the moment of pressing the power button and the image appearing on the three-foot-thick television were torture, as I brought in all my limbs and squinted my eyes and practically punched the volume lowering button. If I knew (or convinced myself of) ANY of the answers to this series of questions, dealing with this fear would have been easier; what could it do to me? What will it do to me? What does it want from me? How can it be pacified?