Halloween Aftermath. “AHHHH! MOMMA THAT SCARE ME!” Part 1
This is the REAL scary!!!
As a kid, I remember wandering downstairs after bedtime, complaining that I couldn’t sleep since I knew my parents were out and my older brother was in charge. After whining and protesting, my brother made a deal with me to get me to shut up (as older brothers do). I could eat popcorn with him, but I had to go to bed as soon as the popcorn was gone. You may think this is a trivial memory to keep, but I will never forget it because my brother was watching the movie Poltergeist when it first came out on HBO. I sat on the couch, shoving popcorn in my little mouth as promised, just in time to catch the horrifying clown scene. That clown scared the crap out of me and my brother still thinks it is funny to this day!
Due to suffering clown trauma early in life, I’ve tried to keep a close eye on what scary things Sayle is exposed to, i.e.-Poltergeist clowns are OUT. If we run across a possibly scary scene in a Disney movie, I quickly redirect the scary into funny or reassurance that everything will be okay. For instance, while watching Finding Nemo for the first time, the scuba diver getting Nemo was scary and on the movie Up, the house floating up in the air was scary. He recovered from the initial scare after seeing my reaction, or lack there of, and continued enjoying his movie.
I figured if he was going to be scared easily, he would have had a perfect opportunity courtesy of an epic fail on my mommy behalf. I used to work at this brilliant program for at-risk kids and the staff would put on a haunted trail during Halloween. The kids loved it, the staff loved it-it was a great time. One year, I dressed up and had fake, yet great looking blood all over me and I used this as a facebook profile picture prior to Halloween. Without thinking, I left my facebook open while away from the computer and Sayle saw it. He grabbed my hand and brought me to the computer, pointed, and said; “Momma has a boo-boo.” I explained it was all pretend and showed him I had no boo-boos and was okay. After close inspection, he agreed and moved on. That could have been a Poltergeist Clown episode multiplied by 20. Stupid, stupid, me.
Other than my epic fail, we’ve been good on the scary stuff; he isn’t afraid of Toy Story or other age appropriate movies, spiders, snakes, bugs, etc.… until Halloween week.
His personal understanding of “scary” came from Super Readers and The Backyardigans Halloween specials (not mommy’s fake blood, thank goodness). Till then, he had no concept that ghosts, goblins, or witches, were scary. PBS and Nick Jr. meant well, there was a friendly ghost who was scared of Halloween and the Super Readers assisted him in understanding Halloween was all pretend and for fun and the Backyardigans taught Sayle the word “spooky.” These shows were not scary; the message was Halloween was fun. These shows didn’t remotely compare to the Poltergeist. After watching these shows, everything was labeled spooky and scary, even our dog; and after Super Readers random things became scary. Every time I turned around, I heard; “Momma, that scare me.”
Stay tuned for Part II where “Momma, that scare me,” becomes an every day issue. Blood and clowns, not included.
Okay, fess up! Who remembers the Poltergiest Clown? Who was scared?
What scared your child this year?
[...] you missed out on part one, see what started all this Halloween [...]
My 2 year old was scared of the witch on a Dora episode, and also the dog catcher on a different Dora episode. Neither do anything scary! Yet he can watch Monsters Inc without a wimper!
Hi Heather and thanks for commenting! Isn’t it crazy how they randomly pick up what is scary? Sayle is STILL talking about the Backyardigans being “spooky!” He won’t watch Monsters Inc, he’s on a kick about monsters recently (different blog, but I will write about it), but loves Scooby Doo?? Sometimes I wish I could just be in Sayle’s mind to see what he is seeing and how he is seeing it.