Thriller

As I delve deeper into parenthood I oftentimes find myself questioning my own motives as a child.  When I was around 10 years old I decided to start collecting Pierrot dolls*.  I saved up my allowance and bought a ton of them, I don't know why I chose to pursue this bizarre collection.  Simultaneously my older sister had begun her teenage foray into the world of reading horror novels.   Specifically there was one book that lined her shelf called something like Mama about a possessed doll that tried to kill its owner, a little girl.  I never read the book, although the photo and description was enough to get my imagination running wild.  The doll on the cover of the book had eyes eerily similar to those on one of my giant Pierrot dolls and it scared the living crap out of me. Every night before I went to bed, I would turn the most scary dolls to face the wall and even cover them up with blankets or clothes, you know, so they couldn't watch me sleep.

Non-creepy dolls, for now.

In middle school a friend, very aptly, described my creepy french clown themed bedroom as the most horrifying room in the nursing home.**  Eventually I stopped collecting those dolls, I briefly moved on to collect slightly less creepy Comedy and Tragedy masks before I culled all of the menacing chachkis that haunted my room and entered high school.  I can only shake my head at why I tortured myself into collecting items that terrified me.  Why didn't I pack them up and put them in a box sooner and just tell my parents that I was sick of their dead inside eyes boring a hole into my soul?  Why did we think it was funny to play Bloody Mary,  I just don't know.

At around the same age, my husband, Chris used to listen to a clock radio before he went to sleep at night.  He would instantly get scared when one of two popular songs came on the air, Thriller and Somebody's Watching Me, yet he continually listened, knowing that they were top 40 hits and were sure to be played.

Were we both just miraculously stupid children?  Maybe.  But I also think I understand the source for this idiotic behaviour, bed time children's stories.

We read a story, or three, to Molly and Jack every night.  Right now, as far as I can tell, they aren't really scared of anything.  In fact Molly LOVES IT if you jump out at her and yell.  She also loves to be chased. Lack of fear aside, I'm beginning to notice a theme in a lot of these "night time" stories.  Probably one in six we read make references to a bed bug bite attack or checking closets and under the bed for monsters.  Why are we reading them stories that teach them to be scared of the Boogeyman?  Who writes these stories that promote the bed time equals scary time formula anyway? Sadistic children's story authors, that's who. Bed time probably shouldn't involve scare tactics,  yet we continue to read them these stories, because apparently we are no smarter than we were 25 years ago.  


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*Creepy sad clown french mimes.
**No New Kids on the Block posters for this gal.