Santa's gonna eat me!

Cooper is a child with ample caution and he's often slow to warm up to a new thing, situation or place, but it seems like he only has a few real fears. Every once in a while, we run into something he's actually afraid of, and I must say it is quite amazing how strong his reaction is.

Regrettably, our neighbor just aided us in the discovery that Cooper is extremely petrified, to the point of shaking, shrieking, and attempting to claw his way through a closed door, of animatronic dwarf Santas that sing Christmas carols. Yes, the kind of horrible kitschy things that you normally smirk at in store windows. Well, our kind elderly neighbors who we really like have one of these things. Its about two feet tall, does a hurky-jerky dance, and has terrible sound quality. And bless her heart, Gladys (age 89) thought maybe Cooper would like to see it dance and sing. Up until that time, Cooper and I had been visiting with Gladys and Ray, chatting about the weather and what they had for Christmas dinner.

God no. Hell no. As we sat on her manicured couch, Cooper watched it with eyes the size of saucers for about 15 seconds, and then he started shrieking like I've never heard him scream before. It was hilarious and tragic all at the same time. The santa was pretty far from him- maybe 15 feet- but none the less he dove from sitting beside me, onto my lap, and then attempted to climb OVER me to the area behind the couch, seemingly to increase the distance between the horrible thing and him.

Of course I dragged his kicking and screaming body back onto my lap and told him it was ok, that it was just a toy. The high pitched death shriek continued and then he started shaking uncontrollably, crying hysterically, and kicking me to try to get free. Thinking it might help to set him down, I put him down on the floor. A screaming fit ensued as Cooper ran pell-mell to the front door and tried to get it open, clawing and pounding and violently kicking to try to escape. "DADA HOME DADA DADA NO NO NO HOME HOME HOME OUTSIDE PLEASE OUTSIDE PLEASE DADA NOOOOO MOMMAAA!"

Poor Gladys. She's old, and arthritic, and could simply not turn the damn thing off fast enough. Meanwhile, her husband Ray is sitting in an easy chair next to us, dying. Yes, you read that right, the man is dying. He probably has only a few weeks (days) left to live. You could claim it is heart failure, but that would be simply ignoring the fact that he's 91 and a train wreck, medically speaking. It is just that his heart is going to be what takes him down for good. If you ask me, it would be for the best if he died tonight- but I'm not his devoted and loving wife of 69 years, a woman that has outlived all her siblings, as well as two out of three of their kids, so take that as you may.

The reason I mention this is that Ray is staring at Cooper with this look somewhere between amusement and horror, and I could be wrong, but I think he was surpressing a laugh. I think this episode was probably the highlight of his day. If nothing else, because of his extreme hearing loss, Cooper's hysterical shrieking was probably the only thing he actually heard all day.

I'm not saying Ray is sadistic. I'm saying the man does nothing but sleep, be in pain, and watch TV all day, and then sleep and be in pain all night. It is no way to live. And he loves watching Cooper. I try to get Cooper to play in the places in the yard where I know that Ray and Gladys will "secretly" spy on us through the windows, so that they can see him. Of course, I know that Ray would have preferred that Cooper actually enjoy his time at the house, perhaps by eating cookies and reading Gladys' 72 year old high school yearbook that she keeps out (which I love). But, given the circumstance, I can see where Ray would have been amused by Cooper's total abject horror at the dancing Santa.

Not surprisingly, Cooper had a lot of trouble falling asleep tonight. As Matt and I sat upstairs writing holiday thank you notes, we listened to him whimper and cry and so forth. Then, he started screaming like he was dying. We looked at each other simultaneously, I sighed, and Matt said in a funny imitation of Cooper, "Mama! Santa's gonna eat me!" Which made both of us laugh, and then we walked downstairs to try to convince the little guy that in fact, evil animatronic Santa was not going to eat him in his sleep.