In Class Assignment, When I Thought "The BoogeyMan" Was Real by Kyra Moore

Fear, as a child, was a crippling concept in my life. As a child I was afraid of a host of things. My family, more specifically my older cousins, were well aware of how frightful of a person I was in general. They were aware that anything that they told me, I would believe them most times because I trust them and their judgement. One day they decided to introduce me to the concept of "the boogeyman." They would tease me with sayings such as "don't go anywhere dark by yourself Kyra or the boogeyman may get you." Just as a innocent and gullible young child would, I followed their instructions. Looking in retrospect, I did not even have any information on who the boogeyman was or even what he looked like. In doing this assignment, I actually discovered that this character was actually in a movie (which I had not known) and that googling the name brought a number of scary looking men and not even one consistent character. I also found out from my research in doing this assignment that the boogeyman is also a World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler. It is very likely that my cousins meant that this is the young man would "get me" because they were, and still are, very fond of WWE. Even currently, after the family eats and engages in various forms of family bonding, the older boy cousins in my family still play the WWE wrestling game on the XBOX 360. This occurrence in my life might also explain my fear of the dark that I had as a child. My fear of dark areas originally stemmed from inability to see, and therefore my inability to have some sort of control. I am someone who likes to be in control majority of the times and likes to do things for myself. I ultimately feel like if it is up to me then I will get it done and if not, then I only have myself to blame. Although these facts are true of myself, I am certain that the concept of the boogeyman, along with the lack of control that I have while in the dark, were reinforcers in my fear of the dark.

As I got older, the belief in this boogeyman character eventually subsided as well as my older cousin's taunts concerning the boogeyman. This is most likely attributed to me gaining knowledge for myself but also my cousin's awareness of me gaining knowledge as well. If I remember correctly, I think that my younger cousin might have went through the same thing that I went through. As my little cousin became older, in the same manner that the jokes subsided with me they subsided with him. Contrary to a few of my older cousins, scaring kids with mythical, or fictional, characters does not provoke laughter from me. This occurrence was just for my cousins comical pleasures and the boogeyman is only a fictional character from a movie fortunately for us all. Looking back, it is quite comical to me as well.