Two nights ago my youngest daughter had some kind of nightmare. I didn’t know about it because when she brought the problem to our bedroom, she took it to Sara’s side of the bed. This is democracy at its finest. The voter (Saebra) gets to make a choice between two parents (myself and Sara), and chooses the one who is not me. Since Sara and I both have the same position on Bogeymen, her choice was pretty much a crap shoot. It’s not like she had to weigh the pros and cons of a “monster spray” platform versus a light-on-in-the-closet position. This method is far better than the times before the kids were able to vote and Sara and I would get to engage in lively debate at 3AM about who’s turn it was to deal with the problems of our constituents. And I assert that a week’s worth of dirty laundry piled next to my side of the bed does not amount to poll rigging.
My first knowledge of this nightmare came precisely at 8PM last night, in what felt very much like the regularly scheduled attempted end run around bedtime. When it was all over I’d spent half an hour explaining that the scary was all her imagination and that insisting that you were going to be scared meant that you would be and that you should say instead that you weren’t going to be scared and that there was no need to climb up into her sister’s bed because she has a bed full of dolls and stuffed animals to keep her company and her sister was right there if she wanted to talk to her and the night lite is on and you’ll be asleep in a few minutes anyway if you try hard and you can spend all night dreaming about the Strawberry Shortcake movie you watched today…. All this work to woo her vote and who does she always pick? I tell ya…
She was asleep 10 minutes later, as was her sister. When Sara got home from class I filled her in on the evenings events and she now fills me in on the details of the nightmare in question.
“She said she had a dream that she was watching you at the computer and there was a man walking up the wall behind you.”
She went to sleep in 10 minutes? Holy CARP! That scares me!
