Monsters, Inc.

Joe, for some unknown reason, has developed a fear of monsters. Or at least a monster obsession. This morning he asked me to get him dressed and I told him to go into his room and begin taking off his pajamas. I was immediately met with a question in the form of a statement, "There's no monsters in my room, mom?" He asks me this every single time we go into a room that is empty or he is summoned to enter a room by himself. I hope that he outgrows it because what will his wife do when he is the one who wakes her when he hears a noise in the middle of the night.

I understand his fear. To be honest, I have the same one. Except I don't fear the same kind of monsters that a four year old does. My monsters are bigger and they usually want to steal my money or my shoes. He is too young to understand why mommy walks around the house at night carrying a baseball bat and saying things like, "I am sure glad that I passed my black belt test in Tae Kwon Do" on the off beat chance that some random psychopath is lurking in the shadows of my kitchen.

I guess we never really outgrow our fears, they just morph into other fears. And the older we get, the more sophisticated we become at justifying them. I sometimes wish that I could just walk around and say, I'm scared of the monsters.