Paranoia

         When you were a kid, did you have creeps in the night?  You know…the quiet, creeping boogers lurking in the shadows, opening the closet door and peeking out at you or hiding under your bed, just waiting for a tempting foot to tangle carelessly within reach a moment too long?  I did.  But I found a solution which became a motto to live by: Carpe Jugulum.  This, perhaps, takes a little more explaining.

         Perhaps I should explain further.  Follow me back, if you will, to 1985.  A three year old child, lying awake in his crib, mobile enough to really LOOK around the room, but eyes not yet as good at that whole ‘adjusting for range’ thing we grown-up folks tend to take for granted.  His imagination is fertile soil, undisciplined by years of being told what is and isn’t real by the folks he looks up to.

         So, on nights when the moon is bright and he can see things clear as day all around his room, when he lays there late at night, that’s when he can always see, always hear, the visitors coming in the darkness.  By the silvery light of the moon, he sees the door-knob turning.  He knows that only the fierceness of his gaze as he met those silvery pin-pricks of reflected moonlight in the dark of his closet was the onslaught prevented.  He knew it was there, and wanted it to know he knew.  Wanted it to be certain that if it took one more step, he’d be screaming bloody murder fit to wake the entire neighborhood.  The red-cheeked apologies of his parents were small price to pay for avoiding the empty sheets in the morning, the wringing hands, the worried expressions, or the disbelieving stares.

         And by now, there’s a dad in the picture, too!  Not a friend, nor an uncle, nor a grandpa, but a proper dad.  A giant of a man, larger than life, but with a gentle nature and the patience god gave a mountain.  He’s tough and he’s strong, and anyone who met him knew it, even a boy so young that walking was still one of those mysteries to be explored in greater detail. 
Now when the young boy wakes up screaming from some horrible dream, the stress of keeping vigil all night filling his few restful hours of sleep with phantoms and horrors unfit for reproduction…this gigantic fellow (who we just know is easily more frightening than the meanest night-stalking critter out there, if he needs to be) is the first one there beside him, assuring him that everything is okay.  And there is mom’s smiling face, watching from the doorway approvingly.  It is a heart-wrenching feeling that ages like the best rum; sweet, growing only sweeter and stronger with age and the perspective of experience.  But despite all effort…things ain’t always peaches and cream.

         Our young family is living in a mobile home, not more than 80 feet in a straight shot to where his parents sleep.  And around the time he is four, a brand new little sister shows up.  And of course, she is doted on…this happens.  It’s a baby.  It NEEDS attention.  But it’s also spoiled, and cries about anything at all.  Fingernail hurts?  Call for daddy.  Hair caught in eyelid?  Call for daddy.  Momma wasn’t quite as indulgent.  She wouldn’t let this go too many times before she expected you to learn and deal with it yourself.  But daddy…daddy’s a soft touch, and this baby girl is truly his daughter.  So it’s the daughter who gets spoiled, and that’s all well and good…except now, the boy’s cries are no longer heeded.  Mom and Dad have heard it so many times from little sister over trifling matters.  They’ve heard that song too many times.

         So…what then do the parents do when the boy simply does not sleep at night any longer?  What do they do when he wakes up screaming from even the briefest naps?  Well…we’s poor folks out here.  Ain’t no insurance.  Daddy only brings in so much a month and momma and little sister already have quite a bill racked up at the hospital.  So, he does what comes natural to him: he acts like a father.  Sooner or later, every man has to face his fears to consider himself a man. Those fears may take any number of forms.  Responsibility, heights, needles, sharks.  Some of us are luckier than others.  Dad hates snakes and heights aren’t on his Christmas list, either.  Tight spaces only bother him a bit more than most people.  Me?  It’s the boogers that are out there, waiting.  Just waiting for me to slip up or get too careless. 

         Phobias don’t have to make sense, and don’t have to follow logic.  They can’t be reasoned with, because they are unreasonable by definition.  But I know that mine is out there.  I know that it is waiting.  And I know that the day it comes for me, it’ll find a sizable chunk of pissed-off Texan waiting for it with tooth and claw.
 
         See, my parents acquired a second mobile home.  Wasn’t in the best of shape…but the price was right and it meant more room.  More room for a mother whose home-grown business was bloomin’, more room for a growing little girl, more room all around.  So, I get moved into this old, foreign, strange trailer, connected to my home by this thin, narrow little hallway.  Dad can’t hear me yell from here.  I know, because I tested it the night I moved in.  After the second or third time they found me curled up on the couch in their living room, dad took me aside and he gave me a gift I still treasure to this day: an antique WWII German bayonet.

         Let us be clear here, this was a weapon that left no doubt as to its purpose.  It is, by design, a weapon made to puncture flesh and render vital organs a perforated mass of ground beef.  The blade is long and slender, thick in the spine, with a spear-tip strong enough to resist every attempt to snap it off that an aspiring young knife-thrower could possibly make.  The thing is nearly a foot and a half long, with a metal scabbard and a blood-groove (also known as a fuller) down the middle…and the moment I heard it called a ‘blood-groove’, I knew I was going to be alright.  I slept with that thing like a teddy bear, cradled to my chest, and knew the first untroubled sleep in a very long time.

         Dad told me, you see.  He straightened it all out.  He said “If something wants you, he’s gonna getcha.  You’ve just gotta make sure it’s gonna cost him too dear.”  The original thinking here, if I’m not mistaken, is from The Art of War by Sun Tzu.  “If victory is impossible, make the cost of defeat exorbitant.”  Make ‘em pay for it, in other words.  I think I was about…ten at the time, but I understood perfectly what he (my dad) meant.  It was a perspective I could whole heartedly get behind, as I was sick and tired of being afraid all the time and now properly armed with some serious stuff!  That old knife was as good as a broadsword and a knighthood to a ten year old boy.

         I still keep that thing within easy arm’s reach when I sleep and don’t feel as safe when I’m away from it, but we grow older and we mature.  We forget the simple black and white wisdom of childhood that allows no compromise.  When I am abroad and away from home, I make do with what I must.  If that is nothing but my own hands and feet, then so be it.  Whatever eats me in the dark will be easily spotted by the next unfortunate child by its swollen-shut, bloodshot eyes, missing teeth, and the pain-filled limp of its useless left hind leg dragging along the floor.  You’ll know it was the one that got me ‘on the road’, too, because my bedroom is an armory, and anything besides me that walks into that place and comes out again will either do so whole and with my blessing, or will be an unidentifiable greasy smear where once a boogey man had menaced.

         I was perhaps fourteen when I first heard the phrase ‘Carpe Diem’, and had it explained to me.  My grandmother had taught herself Latin as a young woman, using my uncle’s school books.  Taught herself German, too, but it was she who told me about it, what it meant, and explained a couple of the finer points of historic warfare.  Which is a thrilling subject for an adolescent male, don’t get me wrong!  It stuck.  I had to put some real thought into things, now.  About my outlook, my approach…my possible legal defense if I ever DID have to mangle something setting upon me in my sleep and the remains didn’t just vanish with the light of dawn…

         I came to a number of conclusions, but the one most pertinent, I think, is the summary of my little ‘philosophy’, and my outlook on life: Carpe Jugulum.  Go for the throat.  Whatever you are doing, when an obstacle presents itself, it is trying to do you wrong by stopping you from what you want to do.  Show it no mercy.