I was born in Toronto and, shortly after swallowing a poisonous mushroom under the playground slide and having my stomach pumped, we moved to Montreal where I attended a tiny, dark French nursery school each day. My classmate, Guy, and I bonded over a French storybook about a family of hungry kittens in a park. As these cats were wiser than I, they ignored the lure of the mushroom and stole a can of sardines from a picnic basket.
Fear of the dark is a common fear or phobia among children and, to a varying degree, adults. A fear of the dark does not always concern darkness itself; it can also be a fear of possible or imagined dangers concealed by darkness. Some degree of fear of the dark is natural, especially as a phase of child development.