At the end of summer, one evening late in August, when I was 5 years old, my sister and I were in bed giggling. My sister was a year younger and we shared a room and a bed. There were many nights we played together before going to sleep. My parents were very upset with us on this particular night because it was a school night for me and my brother. He was a year older and slept in the room across the hall. My parent’s frustration increased when our giggling didn’t stop, so they told us there was a monster under our bed and the monster would “get us” if we didn’t go to sleep. As you can probably guess, this wasn’t the first time our parents used scare tactics to manipulate us, but there was something about this experience that was over-thetop scary for a 4 and 5-year-old! My sister threw the covers over her tiny body and curled up into a ball. I did the same. It was so dark under the covers, I couldn’t see a thing, and I was having trouble breathing, so my fear was intensifying. I was visualizing a monster standing over me just waiting for me to show my head and then when I did, the monster would “get me!” I was wondering what my little sister, Shari, was doing. She was shaking the bed. She was crying, but her cry didn’t sound like her own, and now my fear had peaked. She began shaking so violently that I just knew something terrible was happening. I shrieked a cry of help to my mom, but this just prompted her to say loudly, “GIRLS! GO TO SLEEP!” After a few seconds, I peeked out of the covers thinking I would see and hear my mom coming, but she wasn’t coming, and it was right then that I saw a woman standing next to my bed.
Darlene Assigned Paper