As a little kid, the night time held two things for me. One was undeniable fear. The other was undeniable wonder. Every time I prepared to run outside for trips to the store with my siblings or just to peek out at the dark silhouetted world, my mom would issue the same warning:
“Boy, you better not go outside like that, night air is out there.”
I heard it repeatedly in my childhood. Whenever I prepared to run outside with little or no layering, I heard the words “night air”
My mother’s urging came from the belief that night air, with its cooler temperatures, brought on everything from colds and flu to malaria and the red death. Everyone’s mom thought the same thing. And everyone’s mom had some mix of slavery-plantation-divine-salve-from-Mexico-cure-alls and modern medicine. Yet, the greatest of all preventative remedies was to avoid “night air” at all cost.
Before too long, I thought night air was an eight foot tall monstrosity hellbent on gobbling me up. It had hands the size of my head (which was big for a kid) with claws and it had fangs and red eyes. I pictured the boogeyman, the thing-under-my-bed and every other creature that fed on chubby black Baptist kids.
But it could be beaten by a scarf and gloves.
