I loved to go to the Prospect Park Zoo with my dad as a child. It was only a few miles from our house. I'm sure my mom wanted some time to herself, and my father dutifully took me, my sister Eileen, and my cousin Marybeth there most Saturdays. I was, I guess, about 5 years old. Despite loving to see the animals in the daylight, at night they would reappear in my dreams. It was a given, of course, that there were ferocious beasts hiding in my basement and one would never be foolish enough to go down there with pleanty of company. Even worse, I was certain that each night there were parades of carnivores in the alley right outside my bedroom window, plotting to get in.
These nightmares became so routine that my mom insisted that my dad install bars on my windows so everyone could get a night's sleep. The bars covered the lower half of the window and curved outward. They went a long way to allaying my fears about lions and tigers, but what about the giraffes! Of course, I knew they weren't meat eaters, but the thought of them poking their heads through the upper half of the window was still pretty unnerving. And what about their enormous gray tongues!! YIKES!
Another major concern of mine was that other more subtle dangers lurked under the bed. These could be snakes, mummies, recently escaped lunatics, or whatever demon of the day was in my immagination. Werewolves, I remember, were high on the list. Whenever I got out of bed, therefore, it would be absolutely necessary to leap as far from the bed as possible to avoid being snared.
One night my two biggest fears converged. My parents were having a party and they got me to sleep fairly early. We lived in a small house with minimal closet space. The guests' coats were placed on my parents' bed, but one lady had worn an expensive fur coat that my mom felt needed to be hung up. There was a hook on the inside of my bedroom door -- the obvious choice.
I'm sure you can guess the rest. A few hours later, I awoke. There was undoubtedly some predator under the bed, but I had to go to the bathroom. I catapulted myself off the bed. It was a jump of Olympic proportions that landed me smack up against this enormous brown bear on the back of my door. It's a good thing 5-year-olds have large caliber coronary arteries or I wouldn't be around to tell this story.