VivaCity

As a parent, you always wonder if you're doing the right thing, or more importantly that you're NOT doing the WRONG thing. You try to create an upright, bright and shining environment for your children, so that they can grow and learn and absorb educational information, but more importantly so that they won't throw it all in your face later. Developed a taste for fast food? Thanks, Mom, I'm 300 pounds. Dressed me up as a girl for laughs? Great, now I need trans-gender surgery. Which would be fine except it's really, really expensive. Thanks. A lot. Hand over your credit card and tell me I'm pretty.

So I'm innocently watching tv the other night and my darling innocent 3-year-old son notices my shoulder is peeling from a recent sunburn. My little alarmist points this out to my by shrieking "Momma! Your skin is coming OFF!!" Yes, love, that happens when your idiot mother believes she is invincible and there is no hole in the ozone layer and spends 3 hours in the sun without a drop of sunscreen.

I explain this to my son in the simplest terms possible, leaving out the part about the ozone layer (we have gads of time to cover that) and foolishly believe I have been successful when he quietly contemplates it. Then, just as my unsuspecting ass has returned attention to the tv, said darling boy declares, "And when your skin comes OFF, you will be a LION MONSTER!" Oh dear God. Here it is, one of those moments when what started out being a simple life lesson has turned into a harsh one for this teacher. Damn it. This is that moment, when I realize that Nathaniel's obsession with the SciFi channel has warped our little boy's imagination beyond repair. Lovely. Now don't get me wrong, Nathaniel actually knows that watching giant trilobytes from Uranus (my favorite planet and yours) rip people's heads off isn't do-able during young ones' wakeful hours. He knows this because I told him to do otherwise would be detrimental to his health. Not Spencer's health, Nathaniel's, because I will take the bastard OUT.

So Nathaniel is hip to this rule, but the second that clock strikes 9:00 p.m., on goes the SciFi and off go little boys to bed. I'm thinking that HEARING the screams burbling through aortic blood and cries of, "Oh God, that trilobyte just bit my arm clean OFF!" have probably just as much, if not MORE, negative influence on said little boy's imagination as he drifts off to la-la land. It's amazing the child doesn't wake screaming with nightmares.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I guess I just wanted to share that hilarious tidbit of toddler imagination (I WISH I could shed this flaky mess in one big sheet, like an alien cocoon, and be done with it) and also offer a helpful hint on what NOT to do when young minds are placed in your care. Go forth, and be ye not afraid of lion monsters.