My favorite comic strip ever was “Calvin and Hobbes” and I have the massive 3-book set of the complete collection. Every few years, I page through them to revisit the great art and the alternately funny, poignant, and thought-provoking strips.
One theme in the strips is Calvin’s interaction with the monsters under his bed. Rereading the comic brought to mind the monsters I had under my own bed as a kid and the steps I took to banish them.
I had alligators under my bed. If I had to get up in the middle of the night, my feet had to hit the floor at least a foot away from the edge of the bed to avoid them being able to snatch me. And the same getting back into bed.
Additionally, if any part of my body hung out over the edge of the bed, that part was fair game for the ‘gators. That wasn’t a problem when I was small, but as I grew up, my twin mattress made keeping all my limbs within the confines of the bed more difficult.
We moved to a new house sometime after I turned eleven and the alligators came along. The weird thing is I always knew the alligators weren’t really there. But knowing they weren’t there and feeling comfortable allowing my foot or hand to hang out over the edge of the bed were two entirely different things.
At some point during that year I decided this was an absolutely ridiculous situation and that I had to do something about it. I was too sensible to be scared of nonexistent monsters. Yet there I was, jumping in and out or bed every night.
I still remember my epiphany: if I couldn’t just get rid of them, I could change them! So, in my mind, the alligators became squirrels and instead of biting, they could tickle me if I left a limb hanging out.
This worked very well and I soon made an additional refinement: they could only tickle me if I was over the edge of the bed for more than 5 minutes. It became a bit of a game to see how close to 5 minutes I could come before snatching my hand or foot back.
All of this, mind you, while the logical part of me knew there was no substance or reality to any of this. It eventually got to the point where I gave myself credit for all the years in which I hadn’t used my 5-minute grace period and therefore could hang over the edge as long as I wanted as I had hours and hours of time before I could be tickled.
At that point, the whole monster under the bed idea finally began to fade away. But I still marvel at the steps my kid’s brain took to solve the whole problem.
I still think of those squirrels every once in a while, but I’ve got a queen bed now so they don’t have a chance to get me 🙂
Tuples and Attributes 