It was our parents way of sending us to bed on time when we resisted. If we didn't, the boogeyman was going to get us.

He could be hiding under the bed, for all we knew. That would keep us under our covers, and fearing for the worst.

The nightly prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." was the perfect sendoff for the Boogeyman.

If anyone could take us away, it was the boogeyman. Another name my parents used to instill the fear of Khan in us was Flabbergast. They interchanged Flabbergast with the boogeyman, to the point I couldn't tell the difference.

I had reoccurring nightmares for years as a child of the boogeyman aka flabbergast which resembled Bigfoot, lol, going on a rampage.

My oldest brother was so betaken with the idea of flabbergast aka boogeyman that when he and my mom went on a train ride once in the Pacific Northwest, he saw his first ever colored person. My brother had never seen a black person before this time. The gentleman was a porter on the train. My brother became terrified, squealing he was the boogeyman, and hid. My mother had to reassure him there wasn't anything to be afraid of, and in fact he was a kind person. That was from our dad and uncles teasing us over and over in early childhood about the boogeyman and flabbergast to the point where anyone who looked different automatically became suspect.

The things we were taught as children by our mostly well meaning parents, were nevertheless poorly thought out lessons that sometimes has taken years to unlearn. How that applies to Mormonism. Well, at least the Boogeyman they knew they were joshing. The Book of Mormon stories, they were bedtime stories that were "true." Who could hear the story of Laban and not get nightmares as a child?

Parents, if you're reading this and still in TSCC, please be mindful of the trauma you may be inflicting on your young children by reading them these stories from the BoM as historical events. It can instill PTSD in your children from events that by all accounts, didn't even actually take place. Save them from this fiction, please.

I recall as a child being upset about terrible religious persecutors who tarred and feathered poor Joseph Smith. Come to find out, it wasn't about religion at all. Joe had been messin' where he shouldn't a been a messin'.

You mean his "oopsie" was followed by an even bigger "oopsie?"

The old cause and effect routine of the vigilante kind? If he'd been paying attention he'd have learned his lesson early on. Like so many who've come and gone before, he thought he was smarter than his foes and adversaries, including the law. Until it caught up with him. He fought the law, and the law won.

I never believed in the boogeyman until He was named.

Joseph Smith.

I still sleep with a night light on. A security system armed and in place. A dog. And sometimes when I really need it, a guardian angel to remind me there's someone watching over me.

My fear is not what it used to be however, as a younger person. It is manageable now, and I just do constructive things to keep safe and free from harm, knowing nothing is 100% fool proof. The older I get the more I become aware the less things are in our power to control anyway. So letting worries go after I prepare for what I need to get done today, while planning for the future, frees me to live in the moment.