When I was a child, I had a unique way of positioning myself for sleep. I would lie on my stomach (and it was much easier to do that way back then, when my stomach was flat instead of round, as it is now). And I would make sure that no part of my body – not an arm or a leg or an elbow or a kneecap or a finger or even one little toe – was hanging over the edge of the bed. I did that to make sure that the monster that lived under my bed wouldn’t be able to grab me and pull me under the bed to his lair and eat me up. I KNEW that the monster was there. My Aunt Pearl TOLD me he was there, and she wouldn’t lie about something as terrible as that! People just don’t lie about serious stuff, especially kinfolk!

Some grownups seem to get a perverse sort of pleasure from scaring the daylights out of c…