No More Video Games

by NATALIE

Stewart broke my heart the other day. He has learned a couple of things -- one a great one, one horrible -- that I didn't realize were linked in his little mind until he was praying. He said:

"Thank you that when I die I can be at you. And thank you that when the bad guys make me dead I can be at you."

I've wracked my brain to figure out where he could have gotten the idea that bad guys were going to kill him, and I've come up with a couple of things. The first is obviously the video game he & Daddy play -- and the betrayal he felt when Dumagus defeated them all -- again and again. (Apparently they had to level up quite a bit before they could defeat him.) The other idea I had was when he was SO scared last Halloween when he saw "Dark Vader" and all those masks. Even the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle freaked him out -- and they're the good guys! But I guess he doesn't know about them.

On the bright side, this year he was scared of masks again -- but we were careful to tell him that they were really just people inside, and that we would protect him. And he really believed us -- he asked Joel and I a couple of times, "Please, Mama/Daddy, will you protect me?"

How impressionable this little guys is! And how sad it is that something he enjoys so much -- together time with Daddy -- could really backfire. I guess we'll have to get some different video games -- huh, why didn't we think of that earlier?