Checking for the boogeyman.

So very many of us aren’t real people anymore. We hide behind pseudonyms. We are fake. Afraid to be ourselves. We are a fearful people. I post on the Alzheimer’s message boards. Under my real name. I don’t think anybody else does. Imagine that. I’m one of a kind. I don’t dread or fear being me. Jim Broede. That’s my real life name. I grew up with it. And I’m not ashamed or afraid to use it. Wherever I go. Some people have suggested it’s a fake name. That I’m like everybody else. Hiding my real identity. I would see no purpose in that. I want people to know me. As me. But I sense that all around me, people are living in fear. Maybe it’s the threat of terrorists. Not knowing the enemy. Not knowing who might harm or kill you. Or will take advantage of you. It wasn’t that way when I was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s. I think the onset of fear began in the 1990s. And culminated with 9/11. President Roosevelt’s famous quote was that there’s nothing to fear but fear itself. He cautioned us against it. During the Great Depression. A generation of people took Roosevelt’s words of advice. But the current generations have given in to fear. They are sissies. Checking under their beds every night. For the boogeyman. –Jim Broede