Who was your perfect monster?

In Lynda Barry's amazing book "What It Is" she writes about her fascination with Medusa, or the Gorgon, as a child.

"I made plans for how to defend myself from her. I'd scare myself with the thought of seeing her behind me in the mirror--of accidentally looking at her face. She paralyzes you. You have to cut off her head without looking at her face. Sometimes I managed and other times she got me. I'd practice being paralyzed and turning into stone. Sometimes I did this in front of my mother to see if she would notice."

Barry believes most kids have one specific monster that scares them more than anything else, something they have to practice fighting off. And her theory is that kids need these monsters - these imaginary threats - to work out the real fears in their lives.

"I sat through The Gorgon twice," she writes, "because the first time she got her head cut off, I looked away -- and I realized it was something I needed to see. Something I needed to know how to do.

That I had a very gorgon-like mother never occurred to me, and if it had, I would have been lost... We never need certain monsters more than when we are children. And a furious woman with terrifying eyes and snakes for hair was the perfect monster for me.

What was yours?"

My monster is probably pretty familiar to all children of the 1980s.

Freddy Krueger kept me awake for more nights than I can count. I was terrified of him, but that didn't stop me from seeing all of his movies. I even had a poster from Nightmare on Elm Street 3 with Freddy's sneering face peering out over his razor fingers. I hated looking at the poster and I kept moving it to different corners of my room so I couldn't see it from my bed, but I didn't take it down for years.

I started writing about Freddy this week, for my upcoming performance at David Houston's Halloween show on Saturday night at Luna's Cafe. In the process, I've become a little obsessed with asking everyone I know about their childhood monsters.

Which monster scared you the most as a child? Why do you think that was?