The bogeyman and other lies from my childhood

Little B and I were taking a stroll around the yard, heading toward the back of the shop in search of the deer that have been hanging around. We rounded the corner when suddenly Little B gives a yank on my hand, puts a finger to his lips and says, “Gramma, sshhhh.” He points vigorously at a patch of disturbed earth.

He tugs at my hand until I’m halfway crouching beside him and then he pulls me forward, silently creeping up on the unusual mound. We are hunched beside the mound and Little B looks up at me wide-eyed and asks, “Gramma, dere’s a monster in dere?”

What Little B has discovered in the yard is nothing remarkable. It is a spot where I turned a patch of grass to plant a tree, only to discover I was too early because the bottom of the hole was still hard and crusted with frost. I dropped the grassy cap back into the hole, but didn’t take the time to settle it properly because I had every intention of going back in a week or two to plant the tree once the ground had warmed a bit more.

I laughed a little and told him, “No honey, there’s not a monster in there. It’s just a hole Gramma dug to plant a tree.” “No monster?” “No, Gramma promises. No monster.”

Little B doesn’t ask any more questions about the hole or about monsters. He grabs hold of my hand and says in his fiercest growly voice, “Now where’s dat deer?” and off we go in search of the deer.

There are no monsters at Gramma’s house, but I had a monster as a child. A bogeyman. It was a horrible, nasty creature that lived in the bottom of our dugout. Whenever little girls got too close to the water, the bogeyman would come up through the cattails and catch those little girls and eat them!

My father told me this story often enough and with just enough fear in his voice that I wouldn’t have gone near that dugout if my life depended on it. No way was I going to be a meal for the bogeyman.

There were other tales of dubious validity that we were told as children. Some were meant to keep us safe, some were meant to keep us well behaved, some were a way to explain something unpleasant, and others were just amusement for our dad’s darker sense of humour which we may not always have understood as children, but certainly appreciate as adults – all of us with the same sense of humour to varying degrees.

There was a Chinese restaurant called the Midtown Café that we sometimes had lunch at. It was dark inside and there were heavy, black curtains on the walls. As an adult, I understand that those curtains were probably there to muffle any noise from the businesses on either side of the restaurant. As a child, those curtains fascinated me. You only hang curtains to block something out, so what was behind them? If you brushed against them, the heavy fabric swayed slowly, but we weren’t allowed to touch them. Why not? Because a man with a big meat cleaver was on the other side waiting to chop off the hands that came through.

You can bet we were well behaved in that restaurant, our hands occupied with our utensils or in our laps, but never, ever touching those curtains.

Dad also told us the thick, dark liquid in bottles on the the tables was pigeon blood. I’m pretty sure that tale was told purely for the look of shock on our little faces. I still don’t like soya sauce.

The bogeyman served his purpose well; none of us kids ever drowned in the dugout. We were older and had all learned to swim before we went near the water without Mom or Dad nearby. By the time we were in our teens, we had learned to recognize the look on Dad’s face when he was pulling our leg. We called it his ‘lying look’.

I was 16 when a high school exchange student from Mexico came to live with us. Her name was Paty and she was so eager to learn about our language and our culture. We had long conversations around the dinner table and Dad would tell her some outrageous story. Paty would look suitably and satisfyingly shocked, then she would turn to Mom and ask, “Mary, is it true?” Mom would just shake her head and Paty would whirl around laughing and say “T’is another lie.”

A lifetime of practice has made my brothers and sister a skeptical bunch, able to spot half-truths or bald-faced lies quickly.

I would be the first to confess I have employed Dad’s tactics on more than one occasion. Never to instill fear – well almost never – but mostly to inspire a little shock and awe. Like the days my youngest son was fascinated with anything strange and unusual. He was also low in iron because I couldn’t get him to eat meat, but tell him the hamburger was really monkey meat and he’d happily eat it.

My Dad grew up on German fairy tales. Dark, terrifying, stories that the authors, the Brothers Grimm, were criticized over for calling them children’s stories at all. They were hardly appropriate. Nevertheless, those are the stories of my Dad’s childhood. Why wouldn’t he pass them on to his own children?

Mom probably balanced the scales of truth, although I’m pretty sure she reminded us of the bogeyman from time to time, too.

When I asked Dad about the stories he told, he looked decidedly sheepish for having deceived us so many times. But I didn’t want him to feel bad, we had a wonderful childhood. We might have had a bogeyman, but we were also one of the only houses in our neighbourhood where Santa Claus came early on Christmas Eve, thanks to those same German traditions and tales. We were kept busy with nothing more than a salt shaker, having been told that if we could sprinkle salt on a bird’s tail we would be able to catch it. Sure, there was a bogeyman, but there was wonder and delight too. There was plenty of laughter and adventure, and more than enough love and affection. We were lucky. Even if we did have a bogeyman.