Scary Man

Last year, my son was 2 years old when Halloween rolled around. Here's a little something I wrote back then.

Scary Man:

As Halloween approaches, the ghosts and goblins of movies past begin to inhabit the malls. On this day there was a moving, talking Freddie Kruger doll outside Spencer’s Gifts. It had some sort of motion sensor that caused the animatron to activate when someone approached. Zack was very interested in the immobile robot calling it Scary Man.

You could tell his determination to get a close look because he completely forgot his obsession with mall the escalator. This event occurred after a disastrous ours trip to the shoe store. We decided Zack needed to wear something other than sandals. He had other ideas. But I digress.

As he approached the life-sized Freddie Kruger it activated. Zack instantly went into Ostrich mode covering his eyes so that he would disappear from the beast. After the thing spoke again ever after his clever cloaking tactic, he ran with eyes covered back toward the escalator.

The rest of the evening was spent going back to see the Scary Man as Zack dared himself to get closer and closer. Finally we left the mall with Zack looking backward saying ‘wanna see scary man’ over and over until we left the mall.

I wonder at our need to be scared. From an early age I would watch Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolf man knowing I would have nightmares and wonder about the creature under the bed. But I would watch them over and over again all the same.

I see the same need in Zack and wonder if its genetics or simply a human need to push ourselves beyond our fear of the unknown. In some ways it is noble. In other ways its just plain nuts.