How many of you had “night lights” as a kid? Can you remember your “night light?” Do any of you still have your “night light?”

What is it about the night that cuts us all down to size? Whatever you felt in the day loneliness, lostness, despair — is magnified in the night. Thank God for “night lights” – those calming, gleaming points of brightness in darkened rooms that helped muzzle monsters and banish the bodysnatchers.

All you kids present — I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Adults still use “night lights.” Only we rationalize them as guidance systems to the bathroom, or emergency lighting systems. Basically though, we are all still afraid of the dark.

Fear of the dark isn’t just some childish weakness. It is a genetically ingrained reaction, programmed into our earliest…