Me, Von and Dennis

You ever have one of those moments when all is right with the world? House is clean for the most part, kids are in school, the water for a cup of tea is almost ready and you can hear the soft rattle of the crock pot cooking dinner ahead of time. Then the cat pukes all over the counter. That just happened to me 2 minutes ago as I was just sitting down to write. But that is not what I want to write about today. I want to write about my son.

I woke him up this morning and found tucked neatly in bed next to him his sister's American Girl doll. With no clothes on. Pulling the covers back I also found the doll's special hairbrush. He refused to explain to me why this occurred and his sister denies any responsibility. While I know logically that this was an innocent prank in order to torment his sister in some way that only the 2 of them actually get, this did spiral me into one of my unreasonable worries that I often find myself in. The ones that you do not want to admit that you actually worry about. The ones that you know could potentially upset other parents if you actually admit to thinking these things of your child. You know, you see your daughter dancing around on a coffee table during a party as a toddler. you zoom ahead 16 years in your mind and you see her at 18 doing the exact same thing, except she is in her underwear and she's surrounded by a fraternity. and she's really drunk.

Actually, on a funny side note, I remember the time I took Von to visit my husband at work, all of the secretaries were swooning over him as he was an extremely good looking tot. Von buried his face into my chest and yelled, "Don't look at me! "Don't look at me!" I told them that he was just going through his "Blue Velvet" stage of development. One of the secretaries was horrified that I would actually associate my sweet son with that movie and told me so. I guess she didn't like the movie.

Back to my point. Seeing my son lying in bed with the naked doll fast forwarded me a decade, catching him in bed with either a naked girl or another naked doll with a hairbrush. Both would scare me a lot, but for different reasons. The first, because I just never want to have to walk in and see my little boy in bed with a girl-I know it will happen someday. Just don't feel I need to think about it. My plan is to have his father slide a box of condoms across the table and tell him not to be a dumb-ass.

The doll goes back to my unreasonable worry-finding the naked, thankfully not anatomically correct doll and the hairbrush in his bed, I saw for a moment weird fetishes occurring, cats and dogs in the neighborhood disappearing, and my baby boy sitting in a dark dank apartment in yellowing skivvies brushing a dead girl's hair while body parts sway slowly above him hanging from meat hooks. Fucked up right? I realize that I am permanently damaged from all of the Stephen King books and serial killer books I read way too young. But still I think everyone deep down, every parent has these dark thoughts, that their children could be the next Dahmer or Gacy. How does it start? Did their parents actually have any idea of what their child would grow up to be?

I am happy to say that for the most part, my kids are pretty normal, very funny little people, but every once in a while I worry about their choices in life, the hardships that will come to them. It doesn't keep me up at night, but when weird little things like a naked doll in bed or a funny underwear dance happens I do stop for a second and my mind goes to that dark place. I think of all of those poor parents of all of those scary, frightening or simply lost, people and I wonder if they had weird little moments too, that in hind sight that they wished they had handled differently. I usually just laugh, then tell everyone I know on the internet and desperately hope they grow up OK.

Side note-yes I know I have mental health issues-I'm not a danger to the public, I'm actually quite harmless.