When I was a very young child, I had the chickenpox. To keep me from scratching myself raw, my mother put a pair of my dad’s socks on my arms and sewed them together in back. I lay in my small bed completely unable to scratch myself, and had feverish dreams.

I dreamed about a monster. He and his small round headed friends went from place to place, looking for kids with chickenpox who scratched themselves, and the little monster’s navel opened up into a gaping cavern which swallowed the chickenpox kid whole, while his tiny bird friend giggled in glee and his round headed friends sang stupid songs. I called the monster “the belly button sucker upper”. I was terrified of him, and would wake squalling, mom never understanding what it was that I was afraid of. I had somehow superimposed my infantile fears on a snippet of a cartoon I had seen on a neighbor’s television, this being too early in my life for my parents to own a TV.

This is how I grew up terrified of Snoopy and the peanuts characters. I have never before ever told this story to a single soul.