Yesterday Chicken and I popped into a thrift store. 

He needed an oversized button-down for an art smock at school, and thrift stores are the best place to score 99-cent children's books from illiterate jerkoffs who evidently toss hardback Newberrys and Caldecotts in a trash bag with the toe-holey socks and nonfunctioning wall-phones they've been saving just in case this whole cell phone thing was a blip.

It was a standard visit to the thrift store, an unremarkable success. 

They were having a sale. 

They had just opened a Halloween section.

Smock? Check.

Children's books? Check times 12.

Innocuous toddler animal costumes from the Halloween section? Check, check.

Stand in line for 25 minutes (behind a gourd-shaped man in polyester slacks who would like each piece of his Fiestaware wrapped in newspaper, 

while the Indian grandma behind us strokes Chicken's giggling/flinching face repeatedly and tries to teach him how to say her name, which, I believe, was either Pathi. Or Bati. Or possibly Potty. 

She might have been fucking with us.)

Check.

Fast-forward to 9:45 pm, three hours after Chicken got the patented Katie three-story, nine-stuffed-animal, what-are-you-going-to-dream-about-tonight (eating puppies) three-year-old-put-down... a bloodcurdling scream cut through the night, like a really serious fart in yoga class.

MOMMY

MOMMY

MOMMY

HELP ME

MOMMY

MOMMY

PWEESE

HELP

I took the stairs seven at a time and barreled down the hall like a 5-hour-energy-ed Black Friday shopper. I didn't have time to wonder what I would find in that room. I only knew that sometimes, like right at that moment, the sound of a piercing, pulsing, screaming, living child is the sweetest sound in the world. 

I slammed open the door and found Chicken sitting in the reading chair, his face streaked with tears, reaching out for me and whimpering.

Side note:

Buster was totes fine tho. He was all, 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

LOOK

LOOK MA

IF I FALL ON MY BUTT

IN THE CRIB

I BOUNCE

LOOK

WATCH ME

WATCH

MOM

MA

WATCH

WATCH

WATCH ME

(bounce)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I ran to Chicken and gathered him in my arms. "What happened, baby? What's wrong?"

He spoke in the panting, tear-filled voice of a child 

who has ridden a stallion one thousand miles 

to tell me how his puppy fell out a window. 

Onto the train tracks. 

Which were electrified. 

Also it was Christmas.

"It's so scary

the red stuff

from Value Village."

Fucking... of course.

What am I, a fucking amateur? 

Why yes, that's exactly what I am right now. 

Ooooh, look at me, taking an imaginative child to the thrift shop

where we spent 15 minutes

in Halloweenland,

domain of bloody fangs and cackling red-eyed motion-sensor skulls, 

without having a conversation about costumes, and silly makeup, and funny wigs and masks. 

Like a fucking rookie.

No wonder he woke up screaming.

My heart ached and my eyes squeezed shut as I rocked him, 

as his heart beneath my hand began to slow from its rabbit run, 

as Buster repeatedly threw himself onto his mattress, 

squealing in ecstasy with every bounce.

I was that kid. 

Kept awake by the tale of the convict with the hook, 

scraping the hood of a newlyweds' car. 

Frozen in my bedroom doorway at ten o'clock at night

because I thought I saw a shadow move on the wall. 

I went back to bed thirsty.

Oh, my baby.

I began to roll through the options of things I could say to help. 

"Things I can say to help" always fall into one of three categories:

1. Things my mom would have said, pragmatic, no-nonsense, and rooted in reality:

"It's just a costume, just cloth like a shirt. 

It can't hurt you."

I think he might be too young... this is magical thinking at work, and the fact that it's "not real" doesn't stop him from believing that it's real. It feels real to him, and that's all that matters.

2. Things a person who has never raised a child might say because they think it sounds right, but they don't understand that the principal consequence of assigning a mythical protector for a fantastical threat is, in fact, VALIDATING the fantastical threat: 

"Good thing you have this giant cowboy doll 

to stay up with you all night and keep you safe 

from the red monster from Value Village!"

So, your takeaway here is

YES, the red monster from Value Village CAN hurt you. It's totally real. 

This is me, your mother, the person you most trust in the world, 

telling you that THE MONSTER IS REAL. 

Here's your cowboy. 

I'll see you in the morning. 

Hopefully.

3. Things that... seem... honest? And... mostly right...? Please? God? Are you there? Little help?

"I don't like scary stuff either. 

You know what I do when I think about scary stuff? 

I try to change it in my imagination so it's just silly instead. 

Like if I was afraid of spiders, I might imagine that the spider was wearing roller skates, 

and he slipped and slid all over the place 

before he fell on his bottom 

and decided to get an ice cream sundae."

Yes, that is lifted 100% from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Yes, my parenting style can best be described

as

Gryffindor.

I ended up doing a heavy dose of #3 with a dash of #1 for good measure.

Oh, also we went back to Value Village to play with the Halloween stuff today. I'm calling a do-over. I can do that.

Because I

am

the mom.

Chicken had a blast.

I may or may not sleep tonight.