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Sometimes It's Hard To Guess What Will Scare Your Child

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One-eyed monsters don't faze this fearless 5-year-old, but men in jumpsuits are another matter.

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By MICHAEL WINTER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 12, 2009

Fear is a funny thing. Not "ha-ha" funny, of course. (Although my wife seems to find a grown man leaping out of a moving car and doing the Charleston across a parking lot because something has crawled up the inside of his pant leg intending to lay claim to his hinterlands quite humorous). But funny as in peculiar.

For one thing, fear often comes and goes independently of any actual or perceived threat. One minute you're happily securing 150 helium balloons to a lawn chair, the next minute you're worried about flight paths and oxygen deficiency.

It's also a remarkably subjective experience. No two people are afraid of exactly the same thing. Take me and my daughter. When I was her age I was afraid of all the usual things: vicious dogs, clowns, vicious dogs in clown costumes and mummies. Tess, on the other hand, is afraid of none of these things. In fact she has, on numerous occasions, actively sought out the macabre in an attempt to one-up the boys in her class. It all began with an unsolicited declaration that Jell-O wasn't scary.

"Of course it's not scary," I replied. "Why would anyone be afraid of Jell-O?"

"Because it has a big eyeball floating in it."

"What? When have you ever seen an eyeball floating in Jell-O?"

"Never. But Adam has. On TV. He said he saw a monster that looked like Jell-O with a big eyeball floating in it, and it climbed up a mountain and tried to eat a little girl with a ball, but it only ate her ball because its tentacle got chopped off, but I wouldn't be afraid of Jell-O, even if it had an eyeball in it."

Ah, "The Crawling Eye," one of those uber-campy '50s horror flicks I used to watch from between my fingers while peeking around the sofa when I was a kid. While I was gratified she was being exposed to the classics at such a young age, I would have been remiss had I not probed to the source of this unlikely outburst.

"Do you and Adam talk about monsters a lot?"

"Adam and Andrew are always talking about monsters and robots and stuff like that and I never get to see any, not even one. Daddy, I want to see monsters so I can beat Adam and Andrew."

I'd read about stuff like this in parenting books, magical moments when the heavenly choir begins to sing, soft, golden light fills the room and a bond no power in the universe can rend asunder is forged between father and daughter. Usually this happens during a child's birth, graduation and (first) wedding. For a lucky, lucky few, it also happens when a 5-year-old pleads for increased exposure to Theremin music and men in rubber suits.

So far, things have gone relatively well. I've kept her exposure to "scary" things on the level of giant spiders and stop-motion dinos. No gore. No suspense. No plots that require more than three neurons firing at once to understand. Sure, we have to do our viewing surreptitiously. If her mother ever caught us watching "Godzilla vs. Frankenstein" or "Zontar: Thing From Venus," Tess really would witness something frightening. (My wife's favorite observation/accusation: "Everything you watch has people screaming in it.") Needless to say, she would not appreciate me desensitizing our child to the horrors of "Science Run Amok!" or "Menaces From The Center Of The Earth!"

Which isn't to say Tess is fearless. Like any child, she gets her fair share of the heebie-jeebies. Sudden knocks on the door will send her scurrying to her room with her hands over her ears. The dancing chicken her grandfather bought her last year is an object of such unspeakable terror it has been relegated to the shed, where its reputation has grown to quasi-mythical status.

"I know it's watching me," my daughter whispers in her darkest hours.

And then there's the Imagination Movers, a quartet of Disney Channel performers who sing catchy little songs about eating your vegetables and playing nice with others. Tess loves to twirl and bob in front of the television during their show. When my wife read they were coming to town, we thought it would be a wonderful surprise for her to see them up close and personal. She was delighted when we told her where we were going that Saturday. She was giddy as we took our seats (so close to the stage!). She was ecstatic when the lights went down and the audience cheered. Then the curtain rose …

In less than four seconds she was curled up in a tight little ball on my lap with her arms over her head and her face pressed against my shirt. She remained that way for the next hour, shivering occasionally, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Giant floating eyeballs don't faze my daughter in the least. Four middle-age men in jumpsuits playing guitars and singing about teddy bears, now THAT'S scary.

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