“Boo!”
My son is growing up, almost too quickly.
The seven-year-old wants football trainers and a shirt of Racing, a first-division football club in Argentina, as belated birthday presents from his aunt.
He hasn’t put toys on the list.
But he still loves toys and has just spent the afternoon searching for a lost toy gun the size of a hairclip.
Now he’s moaning about the lost gun at the kitchen table after dinner while I clean up, his two sisters already in their pajamas and playing in the living room.
I say to my distraught son, “Maybe the dog ate it?”
He doesn’t look up.
“The cat?”
He doesn’t look up.
He peers up and matter-of-factly says, “There are no monsters.”
My face darkens.
He is growing up. Does this mean that gone are the days – and nights – of his tales to me of giants storming the house, of cornfields-turned-into-terrible creatures that chase us down highways? And of Bim Bam Boom, a monster who for years haunted his attempts to wee in the toilet?
Is all this gone as he thinks about football? And of his wish to have a WII, a PlayStation 3 and a Nintendo DS. Anything of the sort.
I finish loading the dishwasher and tell my son to run to his bedroom in the back of the house and put on his pajamas.
He tells me he won’t go.
I say, “Go on, get a move on.”
He says, “No!”
“Why?
“I’m scared,” he says.
“Of what?”
“Monsters!”
My face brightens.
