Monsters In The Backyard

The little boy stopped suddenly, peered intently at a corner of the yard and pointed. “That monster is going to get us!”

It was the middle of a sunny afternoon, the kind that’s so hot it seems like stuff around you should be bursting into flames. I looked where he was pointing, but could see no monster. Which is not to say that there was no monster there. My son could see it, I could not. Why must I insist on assuming that he’s out of his 3 year old mind just because I’ve taught my eyes not to see the monsters lurking in the back yard?

“Come on, Daddy, we have to run!” There was no fear in his voice, not the panic you would expect to hear from a person advising you to run for your life from a vicious hellbeast on the attack. Just joy and exhilaration. There’s a monster over there and he’s coming after us and we get to run away from it before it catches us and sucks the meat from our bones and uses our femurs for baseball bats in its all-monster softball league game! Isn’t that just the greatest thing ever?!

And so we ran, the boy out in front, me behind him, and the monster, presumably, nipping at our heels. We ran up the slope of our yard, around the tree by the fence, past the deck, back down the slope, around the playset, and repeat. The boy pumped his little legs as hard as they would go and laughed the whole way. Finally he stopped. He always seems to stop short right in front of me, and somehow I always manage to just barely keep from running him over. It’s our little comedy routine. He smiled at me, breathing heavy after all that sprinting. “I think the monster is gone,” he said, “but maybe he’ll come back later.”