Of Werewolves and Bunk Beds...

Man, being a parent is tough.

Allow me to illustrate:

Not long ago, my youngest son, Blake, called me into the room he shares with his brother.

"Daddy," he says. "I had a nightmare that a werewolf was going to drag me under the bed and eat me."

To be fair to him, who among us doesn't have that fear?

Being Daddy, I of course responded with, "Blake, there isn't any werewolf under your bed."

"There isn't? Are you sure? How do you know?"

"Well, Blake, Daddy knows there isn't a werewolf under your bed because werewolves aren't real. They're only in movies and books."

"Oh."

Then, bless his evil little heart, Hunter says from the top bunk:

"Dad, it could've been a real wolf."

This, of course, starts a new round of whimpering from the recently-calmed Blake.

Now, here's my dilemma.

It's difficult sometimes to discipline Hunter for things like this because:

What I said to him was, "Hunter, that's not helping, and you know there aren't any real wolves in our house OR our subdivision. The closest thing to a wolf around here is Starbuck, and she's just a dog."

What I was thinking was more along these lines:

Ooooo...good one, Hunter.

It doesn't make it any easier that, instead of "There's no such thing as werewolves", what was really going through my mind was something like this:

Me: "Blake, no werewolf is going to pull you under the bed."

Blake: "No? Are you sure?"

Me: "Of course I'm sure. Werewolves drag you out the window; they do their eating outside. Night-night!"

Blake: "GAH!"

Obviously, I didn't say this, but it's a part of the same streak of immaturity that once led me to convince my kids that the world used to be in black-and-white and that's why old pictures and movies don't have color. It's color film showing a black-and-white world.

It's hard to be stern with Hunter sometimes because I flash back to when I used to pull tricks like that on MY little brother (My friend Rob's brother, John, taught me so much, and I've never properly thanked him).

The hardest thing about being Dad is just that: resisting myself.

To help illustrate, while I was sitting here typing this, Blake comes in from the pool and says, "Daddy, Hunter just bit me and says that he's a vampire."

Despite the fact that he's in the pool, in the sunlight, and would be on fire, I still think:

Oooo...good one, Hunter.
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Thanks for reading my ranting,

Brad