Horror Story

I’m not one to curb the creative desires of my child.  We give him free access to craft materials, we tell stories, play games.  Imagination is king around these parts.  But I’ve noticed that Huwyl’s tastes occasionally run to the … bloodthirsty.

Here is an example.  A lovely sunny kitchen, happy Daddy and Huwyl painting and enjoying each other’s company.  A fun time had by all.

Daddy begins a story of a ferocious dinosaur (you can see it on the painting above), a T-rex no less.  Huwyl and Daddy paint the scene together, child completely engrossed.

Huwyl adds another dinosaur to the scene, this is the dino that the T-rex is chasing.  Pitting their wits against one another as they tear their way through a prehistoric landscape.  Ok, I might have embellished the last bit but you get the idea.

Huwyl does a great job of painting the prey dinosaur, he takes the story further.  “Look Daddy, here is the blood on the dinosaur as the T-rex tears him to pieces.”

Huwyl carefully adds nice big splashes of red indicating that the teeny dino has indeed been eviscerated by the T-Rex.  He does it carefully, smiling happily at Daddy when his work is done.

“What do you think Daddy?”, “Oh well done son, the way you captured the death throes of the decapitated dinosaur is just right.”  Sweet.

Maybe we have been too honest with him.  We haven’t sugar coated where meat comes from and we had to have some pretty frank chats about death.  Have we somehow wreaked havoc on his tiny brain by not lying about what beef and pork  really are?  By answering his questions on what a carnivore actually is?  Ok, probably not.

I can see that the same boy who enthusiastically plans the demise of a fictional dinosaur is the same one who tells me “Mummy, I love you tenty million barbeque.” several times a day.  He is sweet, he is affectionate, he is loving.  He occasionally includes gory details of dinosaur death in his daytime imaginings.

Basically, he’s a boy.

This, my friends, was not in the manual.