Be afraid, be very afraid. In fact, be irrationally freaking terrified.

Remember when you were a kid and you were terrified of every single thing in your bedroom at night? You woke up with jolt, heard nine thousand suspicious noises, and hid under your covers whispering "there's someone in my room, there's someone in my ROOM!!!!" and basically imagining that Chucky was standing over your bed with a bloody ax?

I think I've always had a particularly tough time with this because I'm such a light sleeper. Back during the Cretaceous Period, I had a Blackberry that would blink if you had any kind of new message. That light would routinely wake me up in the middle of the night, and it didn't even make a noise. My husband, on the other hand, needs to be hit in the forehead with a nail-studded two-by-four to wake up. Because of this, I am the jerk always waking both of us up saying "I HEAR SOMETHING. WHAT WAS THAT NOISE??? GO FIND OUT!!!!" This is the sixth place we have lived in the nine years we've been married, and this problem is exponentially worse now that we have an ice maker.  Number of times in a given week that I hear a scalpel-wielding intruder, intent on stealing my kidney for a black market organ smuggling ring, who is also somehow capable of disabling our somewhat intense security system= 267   Number of times it was just the ice maker= 267

I never anticipated that a force could exist that could terrify me even more than an organ-harvesting rabid Chucky doll- but I also never anticipated how absolutely bizarre a three year old can be in the middle of the night, either. Why can't they cry or yell? Why do they have to just walk in and stand there in the pitch darkness? Some nights, I can sense some kind of disturbance in the force and I wake up while she's still walking into the room. Other nights, I just hear breathing. Because I am basically Stevie Wonder without my glasses on, I have to rely on the very ears that have never recovered from 12,764 listenings of Gin and Juice on my Sony Sports Discman in 1994. If the figure stands there long enough, I start to panic. What if it's the head alien of an alien reconnaissance team scouting my bedroom for the easiest possible abduction points? (I don't know, seems pretty likely to me.)  The worse case scenario is that your eyes fly open and her face is an inch from yours, just staring at you while you sleep. I would try to say something funny about that, except there is NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT THAT. EVER.

Thankfully, I have yet to find John Wayne Gacy or a Kraken in my room in the middle of the night. It's always just my wonderfully weird little kid- who eventually reveals herself. "Daddy, I couldn't sweep, it's dawk in my woom and there's noises!" I hear ya, kid- literally.