There be monsters!

The other night The Boy ran to his mother, claiming there was a monster outside, and jumped into her arms. Naturally, this didn't sit well with me. Pulling him away from his mother's comforting bosom, I put The Boy on my knee and explained the situation.

First, I'm twice his mother's size so if he's looking for someone to hide behind it's gonna be me. I mean really, all The Wife would be able to do is scream at the thing and flail her little arms. Whereas I am freakishly strong and could easily chuck furniture at anything foolish enough to come slobbering at my doorstep.

Second, and most important, I'm the one with the training. The Wife wouldn't know a ghost from the Bogeyman. Does she know the best times to hide under the blanket vs. whipping out the flashlight? Would she know what storybooks are best used as throwing stars at anything creeping out of the closet? I think not!


For some reason The Boy has become obsessed with monsters lately. Every dimly-lit room has a monster in it now, especially if it's the bedroom around bedtime. The Wife made a futile attempt at telling him there's no such thing as monsters, but I quickly undermined that by teaching him proper monster warfare. Every enemy has its weakness, and the typical monster can't defend itself against a good punch in the nose. Some toys can make good bludgeoning weapons, but really your best bet is to smack it in the schnoz.

I wasn't sure how effective my talks were until one night I heard him walk into the dark bedroom and shout, "Take that, monster!" It did my heart proud.

Whyfor why?

The Boy's favorite word lately is "why." I can't even get through a sentence before he blurts out "Why?" It leads to some awkward conversations, like:

"Simon, it's"

"Why?"

"going to be"

"Why?"

"a nice day so let's"

"Why?"

"go to the park."

"Wh--- okay!"


It's also forced me to do some soul searching, since it's not in my nature to just reply with "because." Why shouldn't he just push all his toys onto the floor? Do we really need to keep things up on shelves? It's only more effort to pick them up, and he's going to have them on the floor again soon enough. It's entropy at work, and there's no fighting it. Why dump more energy into a decaying system?

So then I look at him and say, "You're right. The second law of thermodynamics is on your side. The universe is slowly grinding us all to powder and our feeble attempts at stopping it only speed up our eventual return to nothingness."

To which The Wife will respond, "Why did you say that?!"

So you see, there's really no escaping that word.

Thammy the Theal and other thtories

Last time we moved we lost one of The Boy's books, and I was happy to find it last night wedged between two D&D tomes. It's an okay book, but the reason I like it is because I can use my Barry White voice when I read it.

Back when The Boy only had a few books around I developed voices for most of them. Corduroy was read with a British accent, Bubba and Beau had a Texan drawl, and Sammy the Seal was lisping and a wee bit flamboyant. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Most voices were selected after several readings, some were chosen right from the start. Leonardo the Terrible Monster, for example, is told in a deep, spooky voice despite the premise of the story being a monster who is too cute to actually scare anyone.

All these books are still around, but now we get a regular influx from the library so most of our nighttime reading is too transient for me to decide on a voice. I think The Boy prefers it that way, to be honest. When I tried reading Curious George in a Victorian Englishman's voice I only got as far as, "The curious case of George the monkey" before he demanded I "read it normal."

And no son of mine should know what "normal" means!