Saturday, 11 July 2015

Werewolves and a child's imagination

Last week, my wife and I spent Saturday afternoon (as we often do) with her friend's family, including her daughter and her daughter's friend (the ticklers). They were playing in a small children swimming pool, playing as being sharks (but I digress, this is for another topic). Anyway, I told them about the last full moon and that the next one would be a blue moon. Then I said, joking, that I turned into a werewolf that night. They seemed skeptical. The daughter said: "No, really?" I said, yes really, and I had grown fangs and claws and fur. She then asked if I grew a tail. I didn't know how to answer that. If I had grown full wolf, I guess so. But half wolf half man, maybe not. Her friend said, kind of mockingly: "Surely you cannot grow any hairier than you are." And that is a new great unknown line. The daughter kept questioning me, then my wife, who corroborated my story telling them she woke up in the night and I was gone.

I thought they had just played along, but my wife told me later that the daughter, who is nine, seemed to be of two minds about it. She once said she thought werewolves were cute, but my wife told me she looked a bit scared at some point. Which made me feel really bad. They both love horror and have a fascination for Halloween (by the way wouldn't this have been a great countdown to Halloween post?), one of the reasons why we bound so well (the daughter even said recently that I am just like her). But I never thought they, or at least one of them, would ponder over the possibility that I am a werewolf. I really thought they were simply playing along.

2 comments:

jaz@octoberfarm said...

i once told my niece that my husband was a vampire. i have 2 birthmarks on my neck that look like bite marks. she believed me and was scared of him for years.

Mantan Calaveras said...

Heh heh, spookin' the kids.