Kids start with a healthy fear of the unknown, and a penchant for seeing goblins in the dark.

The rasping clatter of branches on a pane of glass.

The dark recesses under the bed and in closets where the worst dregs of their imaginations breed nightmares that stalk them in the dark.

The rustling piracy late at night near the garbage cans, where masked, furred bandits work fast and thorough at pillaging the day’s refuse and rescuing crumbs to feed their babies.

Addled, homeless wanderers lurking in the Wal-Mart parking lot, bearded and tanned to deep mahogany on their bare shoulders and chests, hungry enough to make their bones protrude and their teeth flash when they grumble their requests for your money.

These are the classic, even daily, fears, easy to anticipate and understand, explain away with logic and empathy for the less fortunate. We ease their anxieties and resolve our own by outlining where the world’s dangers really lie and which are merely boogey men.

But other monsters lurk in plain sight. These are the devils that keep me awake at night.

This past week, my 11-year-old Henry asked about Bill Cosby. He’d watched the The Cosby Show several times over the years, and grew to like the show. I think it was difficult for him to match the accusations being made by the numerous victims with the man he saw, and liked, on television.

There must be some mistake, he said.

How do you explain to a child that the worst monsters in the world are often the most charming? That their evil deeds are often masked by kind words, and fun ideas?

That killers come in knit sweaters, perverts in swank baseball hats, and they can play essentially any role in your life at any time?

That even when you’ve made up your mind, as an adult with decades of experience after years of knowing somebody, you can be shocked and distraught when the real monsters of the world are unmasked.

That you can’t treat every person you meet as a serial killer or sex fiend, because by far most of them aren’t. And doing so would only be punishing yourself for the unthinkable crimes of a few others.

We equip them with the standard tools. Don’t go with strangers. Don’t eat the candy. Never get in the van, or accept a ride of any kind. If somebody says or does something that makes you uncomfortable, tell a grown-up and don’t believe any threats made to keep you quiet.

Remember your phone number. Your address. When you’re with your friends, stay with your friends and watch out for each other, always.

Our kids know this litany by rote.

Yet let me be clear: I’m not one prone to hyperventilating over stranger danger, nor a parent who wants to keep their kid protected in a rubber room of a childhood where they experience little and learn less.

I’ve been known to bemoan the paranoia rampant today that keeps kids from exploring their neighborhoods, or getting to know their own nearby wildernesses.

But like anyone, if anything ever did happen to one of my kids — something evil and wrong, the kind of thing that has happened to people I’ve known, of all types — I’ll feel like I was the one who dropped the ball. On top of the tragedy itself, that would be an impossible burden.

There are no easy answers. I don’t claim any solutions. A balance has to be struck between letting your child live, and explore, and fall down and get back up again, while keeping them as safe as possible, informed and decisive if and when the time comes.

You want them to occasionally play renegade astronaut on some distant redwood-covered planet, whipping their lazer pistols back and forth and defending for all time the sanctity of the universe against alien predators; you also want them damn sure aware how to link up with the mother ship in a moment’s notice and phone home.

It is in the striking of this balance, I think, that parents find their own approaches and styles, and build successful people.

We told Henry that the world can indeed be a dark and dangerous place, that threats exist of all kinds, and the best way to protect yourself is to know your boundaries and communicate with us if he has any questions.

We promised not to judge or lecture unnecessarily, but to listen and advise as best we can, considering all the facts and his best interest.

No matter what anyone says about anything, it’s always better to tell mom and dad.

Politically, I run somewhat left, and have long been against the death penalty, for a variety of reasons. For one, the idea of the state killing innocent people in the name of justice seems the worst kind of totalitarian arrogance. Too often it happens, and how do you make good on death?

That being said, if someone were to ever wrong my kids, damning them forever to a life filled with terror and distrust, the aching itch of an innocence lost due to depravity, someone had better keep an eye on me. And all the sharp, rusted and portable objects within a four-mile radius.

Just saying.

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James Faulk is a writer living in Eureka. He can be reached at faulk.james@yahoo.com.