The first nightmare I remember, I was very young, prob’ly around 2 or 3. I was in the hospital because of an infection in my hand where I had gotten a splinter of some kind in it. At least that is my understanding. I don’t remember myself why exactly I was there. But I do remember there were two beds, mine and another boy’s. And both of our mothers had a chair beside the beds. That night I had a dream. It is as clear in my mind today as it was then. It was a monkey. There was no setting, no background, just a monkey, as if appearing from the darkness.

It was not an evil monkey, not one from the Wizard of Oz, though I have suspected at time that they may have been the root of the dream. It was not a particularly scary monkey. It was not jumping or making noise. It was just a monkey. Actually a chimpanzee, but to me then, it was a just monkey.

My reaction to this dream, was to scream aloud. I know it was aloud because the nurses came running into the room. They thought my mother had screamed. For some reason, I thought it was best to let them think that. So, though I was now awake, I pretended to be asleep. I listened as they talked about how I must have had a nightmare. A Nightmare. A dream that scares you. That’s what that means. Yes, I think it was a nightmare. Though even then I was not sure WHY it had scared; it was just a monkey.

Perhaps it was the Wizard of Oz that made me scream at the site of a monkey. TV was the source of nightmares for me. I’m from that TV generation that started with black and white, but soon saw living color. We saw twin beds become double beds, situation comedies become situation comedies that addressed issues, and we saw news shows go from daily events to daily reports on the number of dead.

One of my first memories of TV is my mother listening to the radio in the kitchen, and something the announcer said made her stop what she was doing, and go to the living room to turn on the television. I was sitting in the living room floor as I tried to see what she had to watch so urgently. The president had been shot. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he must have been very important to everyone, because it was on the TV, and my mother was very sad and upset. I asked her questions about him, and she explained, but mostly we listened and watch, and the man on TV told what had happened. Before this TV was entertainment to me. Now this box had a more serious purpose.

Later, after I had a better understanding of death, The TV again brought serious information. The draft, the death toll, the protests, the war. My sisters friends were approaching draft age, I heard them talk about it. I watched intently as the TV showed the dead. At 6 years old, I thought I would have to go to war when I turned 18, and that I would die. I had decided at that age, I would not kill. If they sent me to the front lines, I would be shot rather than shoot; because since I was going to die, I would not have my last action in my life be to kill another. At age 6, I was resigned that this was my fate.

The images I saw on TV, and the things of war I heard family and friends talking about, were a source of nightmares. I never told anyone about the nightmares, or my decision to be killed rather than kill. Like the Monkey Dream, I decided to keep those things to myself. To this day, I really don’t know why I did that. You could say a six year old had been taught somehow not to talk about being scared, but I was far too young when I had the Monkey Dream for it to have been environment. I think the personality trait of not discussing dreams must have been in my genetics from the beginning.

One bad result of my reluctance to disclose my nightmares was that my mother assumed it was monster shows on TV that caused them. Therefore, I was not allowed to watch more than one monster show a day. Now by monster shows, I mean the Munsters, the Adams Family, and Dark Shadows. My sister tried to persuade my mother that the Munsters and Adams Family were by no means a source for nightmares. But the rule stayed, because I never told anyone that the nightmares were not about frankensteins or vampires, but about real monsters like the war I had seen on the news.