The Boogie Man

Some people think that they've achieved fame when their name is headlining a show or movie. Others think that it happens when they walk into a restaurant and they're able to get a table without having made reservations. I believe that you haven't truly "arrived" until your name is used to strike fear into the hearts of young children.

Picture my defiant two year old niece pouting and huffing because she doesn't want to finish her dinner. My sister, a mother of three, has many methods of persuasion and she quickly goes for the scare tactics by saying:

If you don't eat your food, Uncle Chard is going to come over and get you!

Now imagine my niece wolfing down every last bit of food on her plate in record time. When I heard this story, I was filled with an emotion that was sort of a mixture of shock and glee. It was a little hard to describe because I didn't know if I should be angry or pleased that I'm the new boogie Man. I wasn't a terrible uncle when they were in my charge a month ago. My sister and I just have two very different ways of dealing with kids' bullshit like when they don't want to wear the hair clips I selected. Guess which one of us doesn't tolerate it.

The old boogie Man tactic never really worked on me. I was a little more clever than other children, and everyone knew it. I once debunked the Santa Claus myth in our family by comparing handwriting samples from my mother and "Santa." No one ever tried to scare me, but I certainly had my share of fears as a kid. The one thing that kept me up all night wasn't scary movies or ghost stories. It was something that was very common on television and in public places such as the supermarket or the post office. I was afraid of composite sketches.

We'd always watch Unsolved Mysteries and I would duck out whenever the segment was titled "Wanted." Oh God, when I saw those words flash and heard the scary Unsolved Mysteries music playing, I would run away and hide in my room because I always knew that they'd show a scary composite drawing of a criminal at the end of the segment. As the seasons progressed, they'd even show computer aging techniques to show how the perp would look in the present time. UH! SCARY!

My sisters caught on to it and decided to torment me by forcing me to watch episodes of UM that they recorded. They'd pause the part where they show the sketch and I'd freak out. Sometimes they'd take wanted posters and slip them through the bathroom door while I was on the toilet. How scary is that? Toilet time is a very vulnerable time in a person's day.

I still get a little nervous when I see a sketch or a computer aged picture of a criminal. I can just imagine being in my room as a kid and thinking of the scary picture... then seeing the actual person in my window looking at me exactly like he looked in the picture. I'm a little less sensitive to it now because I'm older, but the fear isn't completely gone. Fear is an essential part of our lives because it warns us of danger and makes us aware of how we fit into the world. Everyone is afraid of something, so it's completely normal. The fun part is knowing what people are afraid of and exploiting it! Mua ha ha ha ha!