One week from today, the streets will be crawling with miniature Spidermen, Batmen, Thors and Hulks. They will invade your homes. They will take your candy. They will eat that candy and the resultant sugar high will send teachers running for the hills. Toothpaste sales will go up. Candy collected will sit in drawers until Easter, when it is finally thrown out and replaced by pastel marshmallow bunnies. Super heroes will transform back into rambunctious kindergartners who whine about homework and occasionally still wet the bed. The magic of Halloween will come and go in a day, as it does every year. I loved Halloween as a kid. For weeks I would plan the perfect costume. My mouth would water as I anticipated the pounds and pounds of tooth-rotting sugary sweets I would acquire. On Halloween night, my parents would drive us from neighborhood to neighborhood as we filled pillowcases with our loot. I still love Halloween. I don't usually don a costume, but I do love to deck our house out in spooky decor (part of my Halloween "decor" includes not dusting- it's the one month dust and cobwebs can be considered decorating- just go with it). I make ghost in the graveyard cakes and jackolantern sugar cookies and read my kids spooky poems and stories. On a quiet afternoon, I will read a little Edgar Allen Poe as the smell of cider fills the house. I might even throw a little Hitchcock in one evening for a good old fashioned scare.
Last week, my daughter brought home a Halloween drawing she had completed at school. It was a drawing of a smiling Jackolantern. She informed me that her teacher had instructed the class to draw things that were not too scary. She had explained to them that there were already enough scary things in the world. Of course, every parent knows all too well how right this teacher's statement was. Every day we hear another news story about some horrible, previously unimaginable thing happening to an innocent child. Sometimes it's enough to make us want to lock the doors and never let our precious ones leave the house. We try to shield our children as much as possible from the truly ghastly things that go on every day. But children inherently know that this world is full of monsters. They may visualize them a little differently than we do. They hear the word "monster" and imagine something huge and hulking with razor sharp teeth hiding under their bed or in the closet. We hear the word "monster", and an image of Jerry Sandusky comes to our minds. Yes, children may see monsters differently than we do, but they know they're out there. So they sleep with night lights and pull the blankets up over their heads, trying to hide from the nameless fear of the unexplained darkness that the monsters of this world project.
My little boy is very tender hearted. He is compassionate toward living things. If ever I have a child who grows up to be a vegetarian, it will be my Hyrum. Often when we eat meat for dinner, he is very concerned by what has happened to whatever poor creature has ended up on our plates. He worries for days after hearing a story of another child who has suffered because of disease, bullying, abuse or neglect. He tells me he loves me at least five times a day and hugs me at least ten. To an outside observer, however, Hyrum may seem just the opposite. He has what I have heard called "little dog syndrome". Hyrum is in fact very small for his age. Because of his size and his tender heart, he presents a tough exterior. He's like the tiny tea cup chihuahua who growls and bares it's teeth at the Great Dane across the fence. I see similar behaviors in so many little boys. They feel they have to be tough in a tough world. I have recently come to the conclusion that this is why little boys love super heroes. In them, they see a force that can single handedly combat all of the bad guys that haunt their dreams. It gives them hope that if Thor can beat down the bullies of the world, maybe they can too.
This world needs more super heroes. I'm not suggesting that middle-aged men with beer guts start parading around the street in blue and red spandex. But, we need more real super heroes; more men who will open a door, carry a bag of groceries; more men who aren't afraid to show affection and tenderness; more teachers who speak up for the child with no voice, more teenagers who say no to drugs, more coaches who let every team member leave the bench and play; more men who live their lives based on principles of respect, decency and kindness. Boys do not need to be shown how to be tough. They need to be taught how to be tender; to respect their own feelings and the feelings of others. Morgan's teacher was right. This world is full of scary things. Perhaps if our boys see more real super heroes start to emerge, the nameless and hopeless fear they feel will begin to dissipate. Maybe they will feel safe enough to be themselves, whether straight or gay, jock or magician, muscular or lanky.
One week from today, the streets will be crawling with miniature super heroes. I long for the day when more of the doors they knock will be opened by real life super heroes than by monsters.
No comments:
Post a Comment