Phobic Tom

I swear I didn't do it to him. Clowns are just weird. The other morning, Tom delivered an unsettling description of a dream he'd had more than once:

The dark clown was baaaaack, Mom!! Not the nice clown, but the dark one. And then, the good clown attacked him and fought him off.

It's alarming that things can creep into your child's life without your permission. I remember that once, as I child, I woke up and wandered into the living room long after everyone had gone to bed. I turned on the TV to check out what was on, and I saw some disturbing shootout involving a skeleton. Or, at least, my young mind perceived it to be a skeleton. And then there was the time I dreamed that my mom was melting into the new armchair....

Imagination is so vivid in childhood. Tommy really believes there are dinosaur-sized monsters lurking outside sometimes, that there are ghosts hiding in our stairwell.