I've had no complaints this week. I know how those people in the war movies feel when they say, "It's quiet, too quiet."

As if the din of battle is preferable to a peaceful, quiet night. I suppose you can fight what you can hear and see, but the fear of the unknown is the greatest enemy of all.

The fear of the unknown never goes away with childhood like the "boogerman" under the bed or in the closet. I would suppose that the fear of the dark is just another version of fear of the unknown.

As adults, the fear just changes - to fear of burglars and murderers, fear of being accosted in a dimly lit parking lot, or even the unreasonable (but vaguely possible) fear of having someone in the back seat of your car right after you get in and glance into the rear view mirror.

Perhaps disillusionment begins when you realize that the real monsters in life aren't purple or green and slimy. Those are good monsters compared to some people. The really scary part of that is that we are all more alike than different, I believe. So perhaps there is a little monster in all of us, in one way or another.

But as for the dark, I never was afraid. Well, not really. I slept with my light on sometimes, but that was just because I was too lazy to get up and turn it off. Yeah, that's the ticket. I got a reminder the other day when I was with a friend and his small son, about age four or five. The boy likes to tag along with me like a shadow. Sometimes it gets to be a worry, but most of the time I don't mind. Sometimes I ask him fairly complicated adult questions and let him enlighten me with his perspective.

I was walking into a room in the back area of the garage at my friend's place, where it was quiet dark and windowless.

I got ahead of the boy a little and heard him calling out, a bit apprehensive, "Where are you?"

So, being the mean uncle-type that I am, I crouched down and grabbed the boy with a growl, scaring him.

He squealed and I lifted him into the air - the fantasies of big evil monsters with blood-covered fangs being slowly replaced instead with visions of familiarity. In this case, familiarity was me, the thought of which would scare some big people in the dark.

"You aren't afraid of the dark, are you?" I asked the lad.

"You bet," he said quickly.

"What are you afraid of?" I asked. "Monsters live in the dark," he said.

"Look around," I noted, attempting reason, "Can you see anything?"

"No," he said, suddenly realizing how dark it really was and being even more scared than he was before I pointed the fact out. My lack of a degree in child psychology suddenly came to mind.

"Well, if you can't see anything, how is anything going to see to get you?" I said, grasping at an attempt to overcome my earlier blunder.

"Monsters can see in the dark," he told me, as if I were a simpleton and he a great teacher. "They all live in the dark all the time and they know how to look for people and eat them."

"Do they have big red eyes and breathe real heavy like that one over there?" I asked. "Where?" He asked quickly, suddenly attached to my leg to the point of almost tripping me.

I turned on the light and "went on about my business" for a while, as my father often says, which was getting some tools for this youngster's father. He was putting in a house up the hill from the garage and I was sort of helping him. At least I held a tape measure and drove a few stakes in the ground - a move quickly mirrored by the young apprentice, who decided an off-center walkway stake was a good idea, causing his father to almost be impaled on a mason's level as he walked across the job site soon after. So I took a mental note: fathers (like mine did) need lots and lots of patience. Tons. My father had his own little monster to worry about.

While I worked with his father for about another hour or so, I watched the boy work at disassembling an ant hill with a five pound sledge, a hoe and a stake. His tiny arms were covered with little red ants, but that didn't seem to bother him much.

"You've got some friends there on your arm, don't you?" I asked him. "Yep, I've got some friends," he said looking at the little indignant army that was attacking his arm, apparently in vain. "Don't you want to get you some friends?" He offered, showing me the multitude of angry little ants on the ground.

He then noticed that part of the ants were dragging their egg sacks away as they tried to escape the little Gulliver's attack. "They must be moving out," he said. "They've packed up their suitcases."

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